Kaze no Uzu
by A238
Summary: We all need a home. The elements are no different. The wandering Wind wanted a place to rest its head, so when an unholy force descended on October 10th, Wind chose a human. But the stirring of one stirs the others. As the coming days are steeped in ancient blood and older conflict, the world darkens. But Naruto won't face it alone. He has the Wind by his side. (Elemental AU)
1. Prologue

The night was red.

Above the screaming and the tears of Konoha's people, a crimson shadow loomed: the Kyuubi no Youko in all its terrifying glory. Its immense form of bloody fur and swinging tails hung over all, a great beast of hatred and vile intent that made the stars quake in fear and the moonlight fade beneath its fury.

All that intent, all of that fearsome presence came to bear on a single man, a man atop a mountain: Namikaze Minato.

The Yondaime Hokage swept a hand through blond locks, tightened the hitai-ate around his forehead and grasped the infamous tri-tipped kunai in his palms as he stared the red-eyed beast down with resolute sapphire.

"You will not destroy Konoha."

Across the ragged stretches of his burning, broken village, the fox snarled, a low, haunting rumble echoing through the smoke and the ruin.

"You will not destroy Konoha."

The beast lifted its vast maw of jagged teeth to the sky and began to pull vast swathes of chakra in, nine tails rearing up behind it as an orb of dense energy formed above its head.

"You will not destroy Konoha."

The orb, glowing and expanding to titanic proportions, shrank into a single point, an impossible coruscating sphere. It descended into the waiting jaws of the monster below. Vicious, burning light emanated from within.

"YOU WILL NOT DESTROY KONOHA!"

The massive sphere ripped through the sky with the bellowing of thunder.

Minato's chakra flared.

A second away from annihilating the village in an unholy eruption of chakra, time and space _bent._ The orb, rotating in violent spirals of pure force, froze, caught between immense, explosive pressure and a hole punched in the fabric of reality.

Runes and symbols branched out onto nothingness, crawling along the surface of the air and the shimmering sphere itself and _dragged_, pulling it through with arms of coruscating blue.

The horizon, far behind the mountains and trees, trembled with waves of power beyond imagining. Chakra roared into the sky with a brutal surge. The heavens exploded with light.

The Kyuubi, enraged beyond measure, howled to the night broken by shards of blazing aurora. Sound stormed the air like a tempest's winds.

Then, it all became quiet. The vast, black echoes rolling through the dark stilled. The awe-inspiring inferno of chakra cascading down from above faded into the embrace of dusk. The storm of crashing sound settled into calm and steadfast zephyrs. Konoha crackled below.

Blood-red and brilliant blue witnessed a strange, disparate silence.

A drop of something tapped at the bridge of Minato's nose. Wind whistled by his ear. Grey swirls brushed at his eyes. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

Then all hell broke loose.

Alien peace died with the crack of lightning. The wind's whistle became a wrathful bellow. Clouds circled above in savage precision. Rain poured from the heavens.

The Kyuubi growled.

Drenched to the bone in a matter of moments, Minato felt something through the grey sheets draped over his shoulders. A whisper nudged at his senses.

A cloak, a mask, and a hand appeared in the ashen rain.

A swirl of _something_ rippled in the fabric of reality around him.

The fight to save Konoha continued.

* * *

It did not end the way he wanted.

On a grassy plain held loosely by sparse, wet trees, Minato stood, barely. His legs, his arms and everything else in between shook. The slowing rain wrapped around them all. It fell smoothly through Kushina's soft red hair. It fell gently, peacefully, over Naruto's tuft of sleeping blond. It even fell over the Kyuubi's talon, marred with blood, forced through their bodies.

He felt it hold him up when his spirit could no longer.

A vision of death, the Shinigami itself, floated above, clutching his chakra, his soul. His earthly tether waned. To seal the Kyuubi within Naruto, he would be consumed.

It was a price he would gladly pay for his village, for his people, for his son. But it was not the way he wanted.

He wanted to hold his son and his wife in his arms, to pull them in tight and never let them go. He wanted to watch and smile as his son took his first steps, spoke his first words, won his first fight. He wanted to see all of those firsts with Kushina by his side, holding his hand and smiling just as proudly at their wonderful, beautiful child. He wanted to see him grow up, become a man, become a friend, a brother, a father to a family of his own. He wanted to spend his last days with the one who had been with him through all the blood and the tears and the war and the death. He wanted to pass away knowing he had done his part for Konoha, for Kakashi, Rin, Obito, Jiraiya, Hiruzen and Kushina.

And for Naruto.

The rain kept falling.

The chains of chakra Kushina had made rattled quietly, and the Kyuubi's claw twitched within him, but he felt no pain. It was all just drifting thoughts, memories of pain he felt instead. Those memories were secondary to the moment.

The spectral form in the cold grey air raised its ghostly knife.

Kushina's voice, strong and unfaltering, faded from his ears. Through the shudder that ran down her, he knew her tears had quickened.

Trembling, his hand found hers once more. Fingers folded over hers before they meshed together, entwined as they had been for the longest time. He could not feel it in his hand, but he felt it rumble in his heart.

"It'll be alright, my love," Minato whispered, struggling to find a voice. "It will be alright."

"I... I just..." Kushina murmured beneath the rain, "... we'll miss so much..."

He nodded his head, little movements up and down that she didn't see but he knew she felt. "I know."

"Naruto..." she reminded him.

It was his turn.

"Listen to her, Naruto," he smiled. "She knows what she's talking about."

Kushina uttered a quiet laugh. "Minato..."

"I know, I know," he nodded once more. "Naruto..."

He closed his eyes. "I hope... you can forgive us, Naruto... that you can forgive me. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. If there was more time... then, maybe... there would've been another way. I... I wasn't strong enough. But you will be. You will be strong enough, strong enough for all of this. All this coming calamity, all the pain of this world... you will be strong enough, strong enough to overcome it. I'm sure of it."

He opened his eyes, blue gazing out on a world of grey skies and clouds and rain that held his son in its damp embrace. Tears welled. "Be strong, Naruto. Be safe. Be happy."

One last bellow from the Kyuubi's jaw tore into the crying sky.

The phantom blade fell.

Chakra rushed around them all.

The Kyuubi was sealed.

On the damp, soft grass, Minato laid still, Kushina atop him, her breathing soft and steady and slowing. He could feel his body again, but feeling was fading. So too was his vision of a ceiling of grey.

How strange that nature recognised the disturbance, the sudden disaster that fell upon Konoha. The rain stifled the fires burning in the village. The winds cleared the skies of choking smoke and dust and ash. The lightning flashed in the distance when the people needed light in a time of darkness. But most of all, he had felt... _anger_.

There was rage in the rain and wrath upon the wind. It was as if nature itself had felt all the pain inflicted by the man in the mask on this night.

Cold began to seep into his skin, covering him from head to toe. Icy hands tugged at him gently, telling him it was time to go.

_Not yet._

Something... drifted down from the grey. There were... lines, streaks of something in the air that wafted down from above in gentle waves, water on the shore at day's end. It flowed, spiralled, circled overhead and down towards... Naruto.

The lines and streaks of a colour he could not see enveloped his son. Invisible arms encircled him, held him close. A minute swirl of wind took hold of him. The rain dampening the cloth wrapped around him lifted and slid. Within a second, he was dry. The rain did not fall on him anymore, but past him.

The wind kept him dry, warm. Safe.

_The wind will keep him. Always._

Minato's eyes moved slowly around. But there was no one nearby.

"Of course..." he whispered.

Quietly, Minato smiled as the hands of death pulled him away.

* * *

In the beginning, there was absence. There was absence of light and dark, heat and cold, life and death. Absence was grey. The moment disparity came was the moment absence died. Disparity was presence.

Presence began with the Five, flowed to the One, and split into the Nine. Such was the path creation took.

The Five were born at the beginning of everything. They made the World.

The foundation of all, the bones of reality, Earth was the body. Blazing with burning heat and scorching light, Fire was the heart. Vast and encompassing, empty and embracing, Water was the cradle. The bridge from heaven to earth, sky to sea, Lightning was the spark. Riding from the skies above and sweeping across all, Wind was the breath.

Together, the Five made life. Life was blood. The One was born of blood.

For time untold, the One remained untouched, and the cycles of the Five ruled supreme. But then the One gave birth to Chakra. Chakra flowed out into the World. The Five were put to sleep. What was left of the One became Nine.

For a thousand years, the World was steeped in change and Chakra; the Five slept.

_But now Wind wakes, and the old World wakes with it._

* * *

_Author's Notes_

_I published this story without first constructing a full idea of the world I wished to warp, so here it is:_

_What came before the Tree, before chakra, before Kaguya? What if there was a world long established before chakra changed everything, before it put that world to sleep? What if, at the tipping point of the age, the old world began to wake, and asserted itself upon the new?_

_The rules of this old world will be made known over time as the story progresses._

_Fair warning, this is an AU. While some typical aspects of canon are still in place, some new aspects will be added, and a great deal of it will be heavily abstract. This story deals heavily in the concepts of nature, cycles, and creation. As such, it relies upon great swathes of imagery. Take that as you will._

_Sincerest regards,_

_A238_


	2. 1

_From the Archive_

_Scroll 1; Memory N1_

_Category: Life_

_I think now on creation._

_The world was formed of the Five, the elements. Life mirrors this. _

_Earth provides the form, a body. Fire provides the heart, homeostasis. Water provides the cradle, reproduction. Lightning provides the spark, consciousness. Wind provides the breath, facilitation._

_Together, they are life. Remove one, and the rest crumbles. Remove one, and the whole becomes lifeless._

_What I speak of are the core functions allowed by each of the Five. From these functions and their countless interactions, all life grows. But not all life is equal._

_The ratios of elemental presence – presence of each element in a living being – change from species to species, but all must be present. In order to live, and to continue to live, one must possess a shard of each of the Five, arrayed in some manner of stability. This composes the soul, and the soul must be composed of the Five._

_But there are exceptions to this rule. Only five can exist at any given time, one for each of the elements. These exceptions possess one shard greater than all others, the precarious balance of the soul supplanted only by each shard's absolute power._

_In effect, these exceptions speak with the Five. One reads the endless bones of Earth. One lives with the beating heart of Fire. One rests within the tender cradle of Water. One gazes with the sacred spark of Lightning. One listens to the wandering breath of Wind._

_These exceptions are called the Chosen, and they are the Chosen of the Five._

* * *

"Hello, Kaze."

As he stood in a quiet place with expectant eyes, devoid of human noise and manmade things, he spoke, and then listened. A gentle flutter of wind swept through midnight leaves, and brown branches bent just a little in the ambient dark. Kaze was saying hello, in its own way.

A boy of six with blond hair and blue-grey eyes smiled. He had some news for his friend.

"I'm getting a place of my own, finally. I'm getting out of the orphanage."

A new breeze whistled across the grass, making little shimmering trails in the knee-high green blades.

The boy cocked his head to the side. "Why? Because I'm joining the Academy. The old man with the white hat told me I could."

Concern travelled along zephyrs above the trees, making the leaves right at the top dance up and down and back and forth.

He sighed and nodded. "I know it'll be different, and there'll be new people, but I... I still want to try."

Long, slow gusts dragged specks of dirt through the chilly air.

"If I don't try, then what do I do? I can't stay at the orphanage," he said.

The wind moved left through the low, rustling leaves, and then right through the treetops.

He sat down in the cool grass, folding his legs in the special way his friend had taught him to and placing his head in his hands. "They don't like me. No one there does."

The wavelength of the breeze shifted up and down across his clothing, placing invisible fingers atop his head and patting gently, up and down, side to side. Kaze was always nice to him.

Reassured a little, he kept talking. "But... people at the Academy might like me, even just a little."

The pats on his head subsided, and the wind became a slow running stream across the clearing.

"They might not like me, but I have to try and find out," he said, bringing his eyes up to the night sky.

A brief swirl in the unseeable stream in the clearing made itself known to him, spiky hair rustled with another calming pat on the head.

"It'll be hard," he admitted, looking back down to the grass and the shimmering flickers of moonlight running rampant in the partial dark. "It might hurt. It might hurt a lot."

Whirling, a breeze made his clothes shift and waver, his old green shirt moving loosely on his diminutive frame. He moved his thin, weedy arms close to his body, hugging them to his chest to no avail. He shivered just a little. The wind died down.

"You're right, Kaze," he agreed, nodding slowly, almost dejected. "It will hurt."

Kaze was right about so many things. Kaze knew so much that so many did not. It was sad that other people couldn't hear Kaze. Sometimes, he wanted to tell people the things that Kaze said to him. But then Kaze told him that they wouldn't understand, so he didn't say anything.

"It will hurt," he repeated, "but I'll live."

He could hear the approval in the whistle of wind that blew through the night-time grass. Kaze's support made him smile just a little.

He was going to be on his own more often, in a place that wasn't the orphanage. The orphanage was alive with small people full of hope, but dead with sad, stale air that hung around the old and taller caretakers. It was filled with a strange mix of aspiration and resignation. He was used to all that. And now, he was going somewhere else. The change was scary.

A sudden gust blew through the clearing, and trees shook with a moment of motion and noise. Little pieces of memory rose up inside him, times when that gust of wind had arrived. Kaze was reminding him.

It came when he needed help, when he felt frightened and alone, or when he was just hot and sweaty on a warm day as he sat in a tree and watched everything from a distance. Kaze was always there for him, even for the littlest things. When no one would hold his hand and show him the way through the fields, Kaze pushed the grass down and made a path for him. When people pointed at him, whispered to each other in hushed tones he couldn't help but hear, and made gestures with their hands that he didn't understand, Kaze grew loud and took the attention away from him. When the people stood and stared at him, made him uncomfortable and uneasy, made him afraid of what they might be thinking or about to do, Kaze made all the bad feelings go away when he felt the hand he couldn't see pat his head. And when he couldn't sleep late at night because of his uncomfortable bed near a wide-open window, Kaze would tell him stories to guide him off to sleep, stories about people who lived in a place full of sand and sun, where wind roamed freely across the dunes, and where people could hear the wind speak. He understood what Kaze was trying to tell him with memory, and he smiled again.

He had Kaze, and he would live with the change.

"You're my friend, Kaze," he said to his only one, looking up to the sky with his eyes closed. "You'll always be there for me."

And Kaze always was. As far back as his memory could stretch, the wind was always with him. It was always moving around him, encircling him in constant breeze, gentle but strong. It was always by his side, in the trees, in the grass, in the sky, in all of nature. Wherever he went, the wind followed him, walking by his side. Whenever he stopped, the wind stopped with him, standing at his back. When he laid on his back in the grass and reached his hand for the sky, wondering why he was always by himself, kept alone and away from all the others by cold glances from adults and upsetting taunts from children, the wind reached with him.

When the wind placed a hand on his head and rubbed gently, Naruto knew Kaze was smiling.

Naruto stood up. It was nearly morning, and his first day at the Academy was nearly upon him. At least he was ready.


	3. 2

_From the Forge_

_Scroll 112; Memory U307_

_Category: Sentient Constructs_

_Society's an odd beast._

_When man turned from the wilds and built homes, walls, things to keep out the danger, the night and the chaos, they tried to find order. Well, there wasn't any to find, so they built it._

_Rules, codes, morals, ethics – they're all arguably positive limitations designed to instil order among the thinking masses. But life yearns for chaos._

_Even in an ordered setting, the rites of competition, rivalry and survival play out, whether or not the sentients are consciously aware of it. Even if they like to think otherwise, they strive and struggle to gather the most, possess the most; to be the strongest, the fastest, the smartest; to be prosperous, successful; to provide for a family; to create, to protect, to defend, to destroy._

_All of these things are intertwined with the survival of, not just the individual, but society itself. No matter how much they wish to see themselves above it all, they cannot escape the grasp of life's governing principles. Everything plays by the rules the creators set down at the beginning, the tenets of life scrawled in all flesh._

_But we, the Chosen, have the power of choice. We can embrace their construct, accept it wholeheartedly. We can ignore it at our leisure, or ignore it in entirety. We can attempt to understand them through what they've built, to find empathy, because they will never truly understand us._

_Or it can be so much simpler than that. We can pick and choose what we want, leave aside the pieces we don't, and live as we please. After all, sometimes us eldritch and unknowable beings just want to make a friend._

* * *

Naruto wandered the halls alone, looking for just where he was supposed to be in an unfamiliar location. He would learn his way around eventually, he was sure, but he currently had no idea where his classroom was. And there wasn't anyone nearby to give him directions.

It was weird. He hadn't seen anyone around, moving through the wooden hallways with some place to be and something to do. He was sure the Academy wasn't supposed to be so empty, inside or out. There hadn't been anyone to greet him when he walked in – not that he was particularly expecting it – and there hadn't been anyone outside the entrance to the building either.

Was he late or something?

_No, I can't be_, he reassured himself. The notifications he had been handed by the Hokage's secretary had specifically said that class began at nine in the morning. And there was still five minutes remaining before the hour ticked over, according to the clocks he had passed hanging above some of the wide windows spread throughout the confusing maze of wooden corridors filled with neutral colours, white and wood and grey and things.

But still, there wasn't anyone around, nor were the numbers on the nearby doors anywhere near close to one-zero-three.

"Kaze, where is everyone?" he asked his friend, standing still and looking up and down the hallway for a sign of anyone.

He didn't get all that much of an answer, just a slight change in the nearby air pressure from low to high that he felt it at the back of his neck more than anywhere else. Kaze didn't say much more than that there was someone coming.

"Hello?" a small voice called out from around a corner. "Is anyone there?"

Naruto stuck his head around the wall and raised his hand alongside it. "Yep, I'm here."

A girl, kind of small but with short pink hair and bright green eyes, cocked her head to the side, matching his movement around the wall. "You're kind of weird."

"That's kind of rude," Naruto smiled back.

"Are you Naruto?" she asked, ignoring his comment.

He kept on smiling. "That's me. What's your name?"

"I'm Sakura," she said quietly. "Iruka-sensei told me to go and look for you."

"Oh," he mumbled out. That was the name of the teacher of his class, or at least that was what the notification stuff said. Maybe he had misread some of it, but apparently the man's name had something to with dolphins. But what was a dolphin?

"Are you okay?"

Her small, kind of squeaky voice made him look up from his hands. "Huh? Oh, I'm fine."

She looked at him funny. "You were kind of mumbling something."

"I do that sometimes," he smiled again. "But didn't you say you were sent to look for me?"

"Yes," she nodded. "Follow me."

He stepped into full view from around the corner. Almost instantly, she tensed just a little, pausing in her step for a moment too long. He held a sigh back, not letting the tired rush of air leave his lungs and puff out into space. People knew who he was, not by name, but by appearance and description. His name and who he was as a person wasn't important to them. They knew who he was without really knowing who he was. He was something, not _someone_, to be aware of, and to be wary of.

It seemed that this girl, Sakura, was subject to that.

As her stride resumed, thin legs no longer quite as tense as her bright green eyes floated away from him like leaves on the breeze, Kaze tapped him on the shoulder. It was a little harder to hear, or feel, his friend indoors, but the message was clear enough: _it's alright._

He smiled slightly to himself. Sakura, turned away as she was, didn't see it.

She moved in the direction of a hallway lined with one-tens and one-twelves, and he quickly followed after her, trailing just a little behind and out of sight. Apparently, it made people feel a little more comfortable if they couldn't see him without purposefully looking. Kaze didn't tell him why, just that it did.

Turning down another wooden passageway marked by one-fives and one-fours, Naruto knew they were finally in the right place. At least he hadn't been that far off, only at one-fifteen. Well, maybe it had been a little far off. He would've asked Kaze to stop talking about his directional troubles, but then Sakura would've wondered why he was talking to someone she couldn't see.

After another moment of walking, they came to a sliding door with the markings 'one-zero-three' holding back a surprising amount of noise. He could hear a lot of different voices chatting away, making conversation. He could hear someone, most likely a man, shouting at them to be quiet.

Naruto shrugged to himself. It was the first day after all, and people his age didn't do quiet very well without learning it. The noise made sense.

Stopping outside the classroom, Sakura slid the door open and walked in. He followed in quickly. The noise, chattering of voices and the shouting demands of quiet and order in the classroom, stopped abruptly. People looked at him, blatantly staring. It was kind of uncomfortable.

"Are you Uzumaki Naruto?" a male voice brought his attention away from the successively raised rows of desks on his left to the space with the blackboard and the raised floor to his right, where a scarred man in blue wearing a green jacket and a ninja's headband waited with his arms crossed, a serious look on his face. He found it kind of funny how his expression made the scar running horizontally along his nose stretch into another mouth, but he didn't dare laugh or smile. This guy was his teacher, and he didn't want to piss him off. People tended to have short tempers and little tolerance around him.

"Yes," he nodded, with no smile and no humour.

The man looked him up and down with a bored eye. "Why are you late?"

"I'm late?" he asked.

"It's nine o'clock," he said flatly. "You were meant to be here at eight."

"Oh," Naruto murmured. So the notification stuff had been wrong. He should've expected something to be incorrect. People did that to him sometimes. Well, if he thought about it, it happened a lot of the time.

Iruka sighed heavily, shaking his head and clutching the bridge of his nose with a momentary scowl. "It doesn't matter. Go take a seat."

There was no introduction to the class. It was his first day, but it wasn't everyone else's. There didn't seem to be a need to know who he was. Hope faded just a little, dust scattering across the sky and wind and all that. He looked down and did what he was told.

Eyes glued to the floor he made his way to the inclined desks and seats across the floorboards, recently cleaned. Like the desks and the bench seats, the wooden floor would become dirty, worn, and perhaps sweaty. Work would be done above them, so what happened above would trickle down to the floor, to the bottom. It was like a waterfall, but being at the top, or the back, was not ideal. Out of sight, out of mind, he supposed.

A leg stuck out in front of him. He stopped mid-step, and paused long enough to look at the owner of the offending limb. It was a boy with messy brown hair, and red markings, like fangs, on both his cheeks the spread apart slightly as his smirk turned into a look of partial surprise.

A crawling whisper at the back of his neck told him the other boy was a part of a clan. People like him sometimes had markings that distinguished them from other people. Sometimes, it was on their faces for everyone to see up close and personal. Other times, it was on the back of their clothing, so people could see it from a distance as the clan member walked ahead of the others.

Naruto looked at him for a brief moment, tilting his head a little as he saw the initial surprise of failure fade into something like embarrassment, or maybe shame at his failing to trip him over and secure laughs from the relatively silent room. He wasn't sure which the truth was, but it hardly mattered. He shrugged his shoulders, palms to the sky hidden by high ceiling, and stepped over the outstretched leg and continued to the back.

A number of slow steps towards his destination later, and he slid into a spot in the back right corner. Once again, out of sight, out of mind. If they didn't see him, then they didn't have much reason to pay attention to him or look at him awkwardly or angrily or however else they could. It limited the array of emotional responses they could have to his presence, and he could have a little corner to himself. It was Kaze's corner as well, though.

With that in mind, he felt ready, prepared. It was new, possibly nerve-wracking, but he felt a measure of calm and clarity as the little fluctuations of air continued to tickle the back of his neck. With Kaze at his back, he would be fine.

Iruka slid the door shut and strode back over to the podium to resume the lesson. Right away, Naruto felt something was wrong. The feeling of wind at his neck vanished. So too did the feeling of calm.

"Kaze?" he whispered almost inaudibly.

There wasn't an answer, just a room full of people he didn't know. Some of them were still staring, still sending him wary and unsure glances, careful and watching, but he couldn't feel Kaze at his side. The sudden seclusion made him feel unsteady.

The lesson began anew, something to do with writing and language and symbols he wasn't quite sure of. He could write somewhat, though not very neatly. His reading ability was passable at best, but there was room for improvement. It was his first day, after all.

But he couldn't focus. The instability he felt wouldn't stop.

The lecturing and the writing continued, and he tried to follow along, but it began to slip by him. He sat in the back quietly, leaning forward to his desk, hands on his knees, fingers tapping with furious repetition. He looked around the room quickly, eyes darting left and right. Why was he so nervous?

It couldn't be the people around him, the other students in the room with him. Preoccupied with his own odd dilemma, he didn't have the mental vacancy to entertain thoughts of them. And he wouldn't until he stopped feeling so utterly enclosed.

The air was too still, too dusty and chalky for him. The flooding of daylight through the room didn't help him ignore the poor air quality at all. The lack of open doors and windows made him uneasy. He couldn't relax, he couldn't focus, and he couldn't tear his mind away from the fact that there was virtually no airflow in the room. It was all stagnant, inert, lacking motion. And it was stifling.

When Kaze wasn't by his side, at his back, anxiety ran rampant through his body. Without his friend, on-edge was all he was.

As loudly as he dared to breathe, Naruto drew in breath sharply, trying to summon up some contact with his absent friend through a strong exhalation. Kaze lived in the air, and even such a pitiful breeze was enough to allow him presence. The heated breath left him, an invisible plume of human-touched air billowing into space his friend would come to occupy. The air coiled around him for a brief moment, long enough to hear the comforting tone of Kaze's soundless voice: wind. After a moment, Kaze's flowing presence faded, and the unease faded just the same. But the moment of quiet reassurance was enough for him.

Despite his uncomfortable surroundings, he smiled to himself, nothing more than a momentary upwards quirk of his lips. But it was still a smile. He would be alright. Kaze said so, so it had to be true.

* * *

When class finally ended for a relatively short lunch break – all of twenty minutes – Naruto was the first out the door. In the moment Iruka motioned for the students to exit, he was already halfway down the desks. The moment the noise of children released into the outside world and a vague measure of freedom, he was in the hallway outside, already headed straight for the nearest exit.

At first, he was just walking briskly, enjoying the rising sensation of wind coiling around, embracing him. The improvement in the quality of air told him he was going in the right direction. Then he was jogging, moving with intent towards the cloud-strewn skies that he couldn't yet see but he knew were waiting for him. The air came alive with the scent of leaves and trees and bark and living things. And then, he was running, throwing himself into a sprint towards the outdoors like his life depended on it, letting the wind at his back carry him over wood and past windows and classrooms and people confused at the sight of a blond-haired blur whipping past them.

Bursting through a set of closed doors and slipping his way through a surprised throng of older students and other instructors gathering near the entrance, Naruto zipped away from it all and into the nearest tree in a sudden rush of wind. At last, he was outside, and he could breathe fully.

Kaze was by his side once more. He was no longer alone. Perhaps he never had been alone in the dusty, wooden confines of the Academy building, but it mattered little when he could feel the presence of his friend in the air all around him. He had his friend with him, so he smiled quietly from his spot in the branches.

Naruto looked down at the ground, some two or three metres below his dangling feet. From up high, it did seem quite a way away, his legs and feet and toes suddenly tiny compared to the tightly packed dirt below. But he wasn't afraid of heights. He didn't fear falling because Kaze would always catch him, either before he fell, or as he fell. He either landed safely on the ground, a cushion of air softening his steps, or he didn't fall at all, invisible hands holding him in place whenever he came close to losing his balance.

He couldn't help another smile. Kaze always took care of him like that.

Sitting in the branches, swinging his legs, feeling the wind, Naruto breathed in deeply, taking in the air and everything riding upon it. There was so much that moved on the wind and through the air. So much relied on the air to live and survive, to spread and feel. Plants, animals and people all needed it to breathe and grow, to keep on existing.

And there was him in the middle of all of it, sitting in the branches, swinging his legs, feeling the wind, breathing in deeply, and existing just the same as everything else. His odd treatment at the hands of others wouldn't stop that.

The others of his class began to filter out the front door, flowing into their pre-established groups and little cliques, chatting loudly, making animated movements with hands, gestures as they found spots to sit and stand, pulling food from bags and containers, unsheathing chopsticks from wherever they stored them and eating together.

Stomach grumbling just a little, he reached for his pack. And it wasn't on his back. _I must've left it back in the classroom_.

Naruto stepped out of the tree and landed without a noise, air scattering dust below his feet as he walked back to the entrance. A few noticeable glances were spared in his direction, eyes watching him slowly for a few seconds. One by one, they fell away, returning to other people and conversations and food.

He shook his head and kept walking, until a leg stopped him before the threshold.

Naruto looked to his right, blinking slowly. "Why?"

The boy with brown hair and the red clan markings on his face looked confused, standing up straight and scratching his head. "Why what?'

"Why'd you try to trip me over again?" Naruto completed the question. He thought what he was asking was quite obvious.

He shrugged nonchalantly. "I thought it'd be funny, because, you know, the first one didn't work. How'd you see it, anyway?"

The answer should've been just as obvious as his question. "I was looking down."

"Why?"

It was his turn to scratch his head. "Why what?"

"Why were you looking down?" the clan boy completed the question for him.

"I didn't see the point in looking up," Naruto said quietly.

He cocked his head to one side. "Why?"

Naruto gestured to the people outside behind him. "Take a look around. They don't exactly like me."

The boy glanced around. "Yeah, I've noticed. Why is that?"

Naruto shrugged. "Don't know. They just don't, I guess."

"So, you don't see the point in looking up?" the boy asked.

"When I'm around people, not really. The ground is more interesting sometimes," Naruto said, gaze shifting to the floor of the wooden entranceway.

The clan boy nodded. "Yeah, I get that. I find smells more interesting, anyway."

That was... unexpected. He didn't think anyone apart from Kaze would understand what he meant. People were interesting and all, but there was a lot more of the world than just them. He hadn't given his other senses much of a thought. He could imagine focusing on just smell was different altogether. And then there was hearing and touch and taste. There were entire worlds of sensation and understanding he hadn't even begun to tap into!

But that was beside the point. He understood, even just a little bit.

Naruto stuck out his hand in a motion he had seen a number of times before and gave a small smile. "Hi. I'm Uzumaki Naruto."

The brown-haired boy with the red marks on his cheeks looked down tentatively at the offered hand, but smiled back as he took it and gave a firm pump. "I'm Inuzuka Kiba. Nice to meet you."


	4. 3

_From the Depths_

_Scroll 890; Memory N18_

_Category: Abilities Post-Conjunction_

_Perception is a gift granted to all of us, but it manifests differently in each._

_I conferred with the others out of some idle curiosity. As it seems, the gifts of perception fall into two categories: enhancement or addition._

_As it was expressed to me, Wind grants hearing and smell to put all livings things to shame, once its strength is fully realised. Heartbeats can be divined at distance, and scents can be followed to the ends of the earth, through scorching flame and endless waves of rain. Sight is no longer required to walk the world, for the ears paint a picture of the way, and the nose understands the chemical responses of life to change._

_Water, however, granted me an additional sense rather than an enhancement of the old._

_And so I think on this._

_We are given great and terrible strength, strange and wonderful power. But such gifts are not artefacts of idle curiosity. They are given that we may better uphold our duty. The reason for this is simple._

_We are anchored to the World, just as the World is anchored to us. It is only natural that we see it for what it is, not merely what we wish it to be._

* * *

Naruto listened, waited a few instants, and then bent at the knees. Kiba flew overhead.

_One, two and..._

Naruto sidestepped, pivoting on one foot as Kiba lunged with a moving straight followed by two spinning kicks, high then low. Kiba came at him again and again, explosive flurries of motion flowing with swipes and slashes. Naruto avoided the raging river of claws at every turn, watching out for the rocks in the rapids and riding the surge of whitewash as it peaked over a particularly rough section of stone buried beneath the flow.

He heard it more than he saw it.

Kiba made a lot of noise while he moved. It wasn't really his fault, though.

Naruto leant beneath a nasty uppercut.

_Clothing shifts. _

He jumped a fast sweep.

_Hair rustles._

He flipped away from the subsequent roundhouse kick.

_Lungs exhale_.

Naruto stepped away for a brief moment.

Kiba couldn't control those things. Not many people could.

He strafed around the whistle of Kiba's fist brushing against his nose.

Every move and every motion was made of energy. Energy translated into vibration. Vibration translated into noise when it met air.

Air was everywhere. So was sound. Kaze told him where the two met.

Naruto circled low, middle, high, in and out. Kiba rushed forward at every chance he got.

It was a simple matter of stamina.

Today, like many before, Kiba ran out of steam first. Today, like many before, Naruto collapsed to the grass by his side just a few moments later.

"I swear I'm getting close," Kiba breathed in loud puffs and noisy gulps of air, slitted eyes on the onset of evening sky. "I'm so going to beat you one day."

Naruto smiled at the orange-tinted clouds, breathing not quite as loud but just as dry. "Maybe."

Kiba frowned. "What do you mean 'maybe'? I'm almost there!"

"Almost being the key word," Naruto said. "I'm improving, too."

"You've been doing the same crazy dodging thing for the past two years," Kiba said. "I haven't noticed a difference."

Naruto chuckled. "That's because we've been doing the same thing for the past two years: you try and hit me while I dodge. You're getting better at the same rate I'm getting better."

"But there's a limit, right?" he asked.

"Yeah," Naruto nodded. "We can only do so much of the same thing before it stops having any effect."

Kiba's expression turned contemplative. "Are we there yet?"

Naruto's mouth quirked to one side in thought. "Hard to say."

"Should we ask one of the teachers at the Academy or something?"

"Might help you."

"But it won't help you."

"Yeah."

Neither of them really knew why. It was just how it was. The instructors weren't exactly helpful when it came to Naruto. It was part of the whole stigma thing, where he wasn't the most tolerated person in the village. Again, neither of them really knew why. They both asked, but neither got an answer.

It made some things harder. Like training.

Relatively unwelcome in matters outside of the core curriculum, Naruto didn't stick around for remedial assistance from teachers. They wouldn't help him. He knew that. Kaze knew that. They knew that. But a bit after that had first started happening, a single offhanded offer came his way. He took it with both hands.

And he was thankful.

Taijutsu was something they were both good at, just in very different ways. Kiba was great at filling someone's vision with swipes and lunges and punches and kicks from every different angle all at once. It was how his clan fought, apparently. He was good on the offensive.

Naruto was good at evading; he could dodge whatever was thrown at him. He didn't strike much, but he could place force and pressure at opportune moments. He was good on the defensive.

It made them ideal sparring partners. They learned from each other as they went along. Kiba learnt the frustration of an evading opponent. Naruto learnt the difficulty of an unrelenting one.

They'd kept at it a long time, spent two years fighting the same opponent, day after day and week after week. It only made sense that they had improved.

Technique had never really been their focus. They both had their own to rely on. What it had been about was stamina and speed. Stamina kept them going and speed kept them moving. The former allowed the motion for longer, and the latter made the motion faster. While Naruto had a slight edge in terms of endurance, they were pretty equal in matters of speed.

But maybe it wouldn't always be.

Kiba was determined to beat him, resolute in the knowledge that one day he would get a clean hit in on his torso and send him tumbling to the ground.

Naruto smiled. As long as he had all four limbs attached, he was going to do his best to make sure that never happened.

"I should probably be heading home now," Kiba said as he began clambered to his feet, brushing dust and grass off himself. "See you tomorrow, Naruto."

Naruto sat up to wave goodbye as Kiba walked from the training ground. "See you, Kiba."

It had been almost two years to the day that he had met Kiba. It had been almost that same length of time that he had discovered a rival, or a friend. Maybe it was a bit of both. Or maybe it was all of both. It certainly could seem that way at times.

Either way, it was... good.

He was glad.

Wind picked up in the grass around him, stirring the blades in little eddies and arcs and spirals.

Kaze was glad, too.

Reassured, Naruto picked himself up, dusted himself off, and began walking south-east with another smile. It was about six o'clock. That meant food, specifically dinner. Dinner meant a particular kind of food. A particular kind of food meant ramen.

Oh, how he loved ramen. Oh, how he adored the act of the slurp. Oh, how he treasured every noodle and every drop of broth. Oh, how he loved ramen so very, very, very –

An invisible finger flicked him across the nose.

"Ah, fine," he grumbled, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

Kaze didn't like it when he ranted about ramen, but that was about it.

Kaze liked him, liked most things he did. Kaze liked Kiba, was fond of him in some certain ways he wasn't really sure of. Kaze was hard to pin down, hard to get a read of. But that was only natural. How could anyone pin down the wind?

Naruto walked off to get himself some ramen. Kaze followed along to make sure he didn't rant about it again.

Life wasn't so bad.

* * *

"Have you had enough to eat, Naruto-kun?"

As was routine, Naruto slurped down the last drops of broth from his bowl quietly. "Yes, Ayame-nee-chan."

"Are you sure? Because it'd be no trouble to just refill your bowl when my old man isn't looking."

As was routine, he put his bowl down with a inaudible click against the wood. "I'm not worth getting into trouble over, Ayame-nee-chan. Besides, I'm fine."

"Of course you're worth getting into trouble over, Naruto-kun. And I know you're just being polite."

As was routine, he slid his bowl forward. "... one more of the miso, please."

As was routine, Ayame offered him her oddly warm yet sly smile. "I knew it."

It was only her knowing tone of voice that betrayed the smirk lying beneath it all, but it was never mocking. Ayame was never mocking. She was always warm, friendly, thoughtful. And she was more than that.

People worked in layers. Words existed on those layers, things he could use to describe what swirled around in the complex space between. Some people were few layers. Some people were many. Ayame was somewhere in between. Her layers were reorganised, rearranged in a manner that let her get close quick, open up to people faster than normal. If he remembered right, she had referred to it as wearing her heart on her sleeve. It was a funny expression, mostly because its phrasing relied purely on the existence of a particular facet of clothing. It was funnier still because the clothes Ayame wore didn't always have sleeves.

Despite the strange circular humour he found in the whole thing, he understood what she meant. And it was evidence to his idea. Some of her more complex aspects lay on the surface, while some slumbered beneath the shell. Everyone was different like that, similar yet dissimilar in that way.

Another steaming bowl filled to the brim with his favourite food slid in front of him when Teuchi's back was turned. But even when Teuchi's back was turned, his back was never turned.

"Ayame..."

He watched a familiar anxious twinge pass up her body and through her cheeks. "... uh, yes?"

"Did you give Naruto ramen for free?"

Then her nose got slightly red. "What would you do if I said yes?"

An older man in the white robe with the funny hat gave her an oddly familial grin. "The same thing I do every time you say yes."

"Say you'll take the bowl out of my allowance for the next two weeks but won't actually act on it?"

He looked slightly towards the floor. "... yes."

An exact copy of the smile on Teuchi's weathered face appeared on Ayame's. "I knew it."

Naruto smiled. They were good people. Kaze liked them. He liked them, too.

The lovely girl with brown hair turned her smile to him. "He always was a sucker for kindness, Naruto-kun."

"Thanks, Ayame-nee-chan," he smiled back at her before looking down to the ramen below.

Ramen truly was a wonderful thing. Sometimes he inhaled it like air. Sometimes he savoured it like cold water on a bone-dry day, when the wind was stripped of comfortable moisture by the shaking head of the sun and its equally jealous rays. Kaze didn't like the sun much, but the sun was necessary for the world to function.

Naruto shook his head, still smiling.

There were times in his life when he was consumed by thought, times in which he could be absorbed by an idea or a concept so wholly that he ignored everything else in favour of quietly expressing disfavour of a notion that grated at his soul, chipped away at the little bit of being he had to call his own.

"Itadakimasu," he said quietly before slowly digging into the bowl below with the same unwavering smile.

He was grateful this was not one of those times.

A few more minutes passed as he plucked and picked at his ramen, nibbling and chewing and slurping and savouring. He was in no particular rush, not running a race with his mouth, his chopsticks and a bowlful of wondrous noodles and broth that needed winning, nor did he have anywhere that needed being in body or mind.

He was here. His bowl was here. Ayame was here. Teuchi was here. Kaze was here.

Naruto smiled into his ramen.

Then his head perked up at the introduction of a familiar sound. A voice groaned lowly, in a way that made teeth within the owner's mouth grit and grind as a jaw clamped shut tighter and tighter until he could almost hear the bones creak like an unoiled hinge.

Speaking of which, his front door did need a little look at and a few drops of lubricant.

But that was beside the point. He would know that jaw-creaking groan anywhere.

It did follow in the wake of Kiba whenever he did anything stupid, after all. Though, Kaze did make another good point in the presence of the scent of dog and other canine life that floated on the air whenever it came near.

Naruto turned quickly in his seat, slurping up a few stray noodles, poking his head out and waving a hand full of chopstick at the approaching groan. "Hello, Hana!"

"Damn it, Naruto!" The older girl in shorts and a flak jacket nearly jumped when he suddenly popped out from behind the banner draped over the ramen stand's front. "How do you keep doing that?"

Naruto offered her a consoling smile. "Don't worry, Hana. You might not be surprised by me one day."

It wasn't likely, but there was always a chance. It wasn't like _he_ heard everything. Kaze, on the other hand did hear everything. Kaze just didn't share everything with him. People needed privacy. That was what he told himself, anyway. He didn't think Kaze was particularly concerned by the idea of privacy, or even particularly aware of what it was.

"I'll get you back someday, Naruto," she grinned back in her genetically predatory way. Sharp canines made for a scary smile. But then she quickly returned to her groaning and swished her head back and forth, looking and sniffing a few times.

"You haven't seen Kiba around here, have you?" she asked, her big dark eyes moving around constantly. "It's been about two hours, and he was meant to be back home by now."

"Huh," Naruto raised an eyebrow. "Maybe he just got sidetracked by an interesting smell. Didn't it happen to you when you were our age?"

Hana shook her head and kept on groaning. "I grew out of that by the time I was six."

"Do you want me to help you look for him?" Naruto asked.

Hana sighed and shrugged. "I can't see why not. You seem to have better luck tracking him down than I do anyway."

"Right," Naruto nodded. "I'll be with you in a minute."

With two friendly goodbyes, a promise to come back tomorrow, and a bit of money slipped across the counter like always, Naruto slipped from his seat, walked under the banner, stuck his hands in the pockets of his grey shorts and looked up at Hana with a smile and cocked his head towards the street.

With that, they were off.

It wasn't often that he spent large quantities of time with Inuzuka Hana alone. Naruto hung around with Kiba a lot, sometimes for hours after the Academy was said and done for the day. They talked a little and fought a whole lot more, talked some more and fought some more. The same couldn't be said for his time with Kiba's sister.

It was made of a little bit of quiet, along with some jokes and smiles spread thinly between her attempts to get one up on him, but failing markedly because of the little noises she made, the little idiosyncrasies he had acquired knowledge of thanks to time and hearing and Kaze's habit of interpreting the vibrations that filled his ears whenever Hana groaned or squeezed her jaw shut until it squeaked.

Much like his squeaky door. He really needed to get that fixed.

Naruto shook his the irrelevant thought loose of his head and kept on walking side by side with Hana.

"You got any idea where he'd be, shrimp?" she asked with a smirk, looking down at him from a distance above.

Naruto just smiled up at her. "We could check the training ground first, but he's probably somewhere else."

He was lucky he wasn't sensitive about his rather minimal stature. Otherwise, Hana would've made him groan, and then it would've been fifty-six to one. He did need to keep his flawless winning streak intact, after all.

Seeing her attempt fail, Hana groaned.

Naruto's smile widened. "And that makes fifty-seven."

Walking the tightly-packed dirt streets of Konoha to the north-west, they checked the training ground he and Kiba often frequented in the afternoons and he visited late at night in the height of summer he couldn't sleep through. In the midst of the plain grassy clearing, there were no signs of him other than the scuffs in the ground from their earlier spar and Hana's detection of a familiar trail of smell.

"He went this way," Hana said and pointed through the trees, sniffing gently in the Inuzuka way when someone was in need of finding.

She started off in the direction at speed, blurring into the trees to follow the scent. Hana was fast, but it didn't take him very long to catch up.

"The trail is south-easterly," Hana noted as he jumped next to her through the air, leaping from branch to branch a split-second behind her. "But I didn't smell it back near the ramen stand. How odd."

"Change in wind direction?" Naruto suggested, sandals pressing soundlessly on the bark as he pushed himself into the air again.

Hana nodded slowly. "Possible, I suppose."

They kept leaping through trees until the patches of woodland fell away into buildings and structures. Naruto landed back on the street.

"Oh, I forgot," Hana said from the branch right above his head. "You can't walk up things yet, can you?"

Naruto shook his head. "Nope."

Hana smiled down at him from the leaves. "Don't worry. You'll learn it soon enough. Or I might teach you and Kiba when I get some spare time."

Naruto smiled back up. "Sounds good, but let's keep looking for Kiba."

The search led them on a slightly weaving path through alleyways and down side streets. Hana kept mumbling something about unusual patterns. Naruto didn't think Kiba would lead them on such a weird trail, one that kept shifting up and down and all about, like he was staggering back and forth as he walked or ran.

Hana was right. The pattern was unusual.

And it was getting late. The sun was well into its setting phase, slipping behind hills in the distance.

"Kiba!"

Hana's voice shook him out of thoughts and the mechanical movement of his feet down streets and dusty sidewalks of dirt and concrete. A small cluster of trees were to their left. And Kiba was sitting in the middle of them with his back to the bark, slumped, smiling and droopy-eyed.

He giggled quietly to himself, mumbling words that seemed to drip out of his mouth alongside the drool making its way down his chin.

Naruto was the first one to lean down in front of his friend, waving a concerned hand in front of glassy, bloodshot eyes. "Kiba? Are you alright?"

Kiba just kept giggling and dribbling.

Hana stepped around him, plucked something thin, white and still smoking off the ground. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me."

Naruto offered a worried glance to the older girl. "What is it?"

"A few possibilities: someone gave my little brother some Oha, he found it on the ground and decided to smoke it, or he was attracted by the smell of it as it was burning," Hana groaned before she dropped it to the dirt and stomped down hard. "Either way, he's stoned off his ass right now."

Naruto looked at Hana, then at Kiba, then back to Hana. "Um... what?"

Hana shook her head and sighed. "Oha, more commonly known as the tail feather flower, is a component of an anaesthetic we make in Konoha for animal use. The problem is it can also be used as a recreational drug. Light up a dried handful of this stuff and it'll keep you burnt for days on end."

Naruto looked back at Kiba with uncertain eyes. "I'm not sure if I should laugh or feel sorry for him."

Stoned or not, Kiba was going to get one hell of an earful from Tsume when he got home.

"Same here," Hana said with a wry smile. "You know what my Okaa-chan is like about this sort of stuff. Remember the first time you came over for dinner?"

How could he forget? All he said was that he hadn't wanted seconds, but went his stomach rumbled a moment later, Tsume went off like a bomb. He was glad Hana was nowhere near as frightening as her mother, because Tsume was the most terrifying person he'd ever met.

But her food was really good, so it kind of balanced out. It was his second most favourite cooking, just below Ayame and Teuchi's ramen.

Naruto just bowed his head. "Yeah, poor Kiba."

Hana shook her head and sighed again. "He's a good kid, but, damn, can he be stupid."

Reaching down, Hana hauled Kiba over her shoulder and began to walk.

"Put me down," Kiba mumbled through his drooling and giggling. "I need to stop the salt-lick eagles from eating the dragon! The future of the pig-noses depends on it!"

Hana waved goodbye and kept shaking her head.

Naruto stood in the trees and waved back.

That was certainly an unexpected end to a rather ordinary day. Kaze had been quietly laughing the entire time, holding onto his shoulder and whistling a happy tune as he had taken time with Hana to leap through the leaves and follow a trail he could barely smell.

His ears were much better than his nose, anyway.

Naruto turned back to the buildings behind. It was time to go home.

But then he shivered. Or he shuddered. There was little difference in reality between the two. One was in his spine. The other was in his shoulders. But he felt one or the other at distinctly different times. A shiver was because of cold, because of temperature or fear. A shudder was an expression of anxiety, nervousness or tension.

He had never felt both at the same time.

"Kaze?" he whispered to the evening and the setting sun.

Air raked across the nape of his neck through the trees. He looked down the street, followed the dust kicked up to the left and then right and then left again. Guided by wind and waste, his feet led him somewhere east, then further south. A growing sensation started to hang over him. There was a river somewhere near to him. Kaze told him that when he stood close enough to a centre of humidity and moisture even on what was quickly becoming a cold night. When Kaze told him, he felt it run along his skin like water.

Coming to stand near a tall wall that ran for quite some distance, Naruto peered through trees and long shadows to a source of water moving swiftly or slowly or gradually through a channel it had carved for itself long ago. The old stream glittered and sparkled as fading light drew back, receding gently behind the cradle of mountains and forest that lay above and around.

He had been here before.

Naruto looked around a little more carefully.

There were trees everywhere. Konoha had trees everywhere. There was grass, too. And then there was the shaded river he could see in orange slits between the trees in front. It was someone's river.

"Oh," Naruto mumbled out.

This was the territory of a clan. The high, thick wall to his left was stamped with a clan's symbol every few metres. If he recalled right, the flatter land north and west belonged to the Senju, and the slightly hillier, rougher area to the south and east belonged to the Uchiha.

Then, he was next to the Uchiha's holdings. If that was true, the river he saw was the Naka.

The Naka River was an old one. He had walked the banks before. It was rocky, lots of pebbles of varying sizes to trip over at different places. It bent in sections, curved and rose and fell like a river should. It was long, old and ancient. It had flowed long before the Uchiha had laid claim to it as a part of their home, long before it was theirs.

He had walked it when he was five years old. Kaze had guided him along the river in a single day, showed him the path it took and helped him understand why. A young boy's overly curious mind would not be sated by the mere 'how'. He wanted to know why it flowed, why it even bothered to run and walk at its different speeds and hold fish and let adventurous children cross at its most hazardous places.

Kaze explained it in a single, seemingly mundane word: _life_.

And from that, he began to understand it. The river was a part of life, so it _was_. The river didn't want or need. It was simply content to _be_.

And so was he.

But that was then. This was now. Thoughts of the day dropped away.

Kaze didn't tell him why he was here.

He waited.

When Kaze didn't speak, he shuddered again. Nervousness and tension built quickly, but he steadied himself enough to breathe quietly and calmly. The slow wind still weaved by him. The trees and the leaves were calm. The coming night was still.

But the air rippled and wavered slightly, enough to make hairs stand on end and skin to poke upwards in those small lumps that didn't make sense to him. The air around him shuddered quietly. The wind was growing anxious.

_But why?_

Kaze did not utter a single word in answer, merely urged him forward to the river's edge.

Naruto walked through the trees with a careful eye, gazing at the bark and the grass with caution. The dirt became pebbles with a crunch of sandal on shore and bank.

The river trickled by, content but aware. More wind crawled up his spine. Something more than water was running.

His ears twitched at the advent of noise. There were... echoes.

Somewhere down the river, standing near the water, he could hear unfamiliar voices. Words he couldn't make out were being spoken, moving slowly at first but faster and faster between two sources of sound. There was anger, sadness and desperation in the pulsing vibrations he felt moving through the air. Kaze told him as much.

But who were they?

Then, all of a sudden, it stopped. The exchange of sound ended when something interrupted the river so far into its flow a moment later. Something splashed. It was something... heavy.

_Human,_ Kaze whispered in his ear.

He didn't understand.

But something else became apparent when he felt a foreign sensation crawl across his body, up and down in swells and waves and ripples and currents. Static spread over him. A charge enveloped him like wind did for no more than a second. It was gone, but not forgotten.

He felt it build... above. Clouds stained with orange and red floated in the sky, but the source was not them. Rumbles, vibrations and echoes in the depths of the sky resonated in the distance, riding on winds no one else could hear. Through the air, Naruto felt the faraway thunder in his bones.

_Storm_.

Kaze brushed against him, moving over his shoulder in correction, pushing the thought deep into his ear with a quiet whirl and ripple of motion through the chilling air.

_More._

Far beyond the horizon, it was more than a storm.

It was a flash of light. It was a bolt of power. It was lightning.

Kaze gave him one more word.

_Raikou._

Standing on the banks of the Naka River, near the far southeast wall of the Uchiha clan's grand holdings, Naruto understood.

He didn't know when, but lightning was coming.

And it would fall upon the Uchiha.


	5. 4

_From the Nexus_

_Scroll 62; Memory N80_

_Category: Precognition_

_I feel the World, for I rest closer to its origin than all else._

_All things feel it, in one way or another. It is felt through the sense, eyes and ears and smells and touches, temperatures and sensations and thoughts. But these are results of interactions, that there exist beings to experience these things, to feed off them._

_But I do not feed off the world, for I am fed by it. The Chosen do not take experience and interaction from the World, for it is given freely to the blessed of the Five. In this, I do not so much interact as I interpret. Lightning's light is clear to me, as is the clap of thunder and the steady drum of rain. It speaks without words, without bias or accent, without the languages of man._

_Lightning knows only truth._

_When something of great impact will come to pass in the World, it is made to known to me. Lightning speaks with thunder and storms, tempests and truth. I listen._

_In youth, I was not prepared. In youth, I was weak. In youth, I was a child._

_One glorious voice of the World spoke, and I was cast into deepest terror. I was told of terrible things, and they came to be. The future, a domain never my own, was carved plain in the skies above._

_I learned to watch the heavens, and I learned the primordial fear of a Chosen's arrival._

* * *

Five days.

For five long days of endless, arduous turmoil, Naruto stayed still in his apartment.

Even shut away inside the safety of his home, his window wide open to let Kaze in and out as he breathed in gasping, shallow breaths, he could feel the thunder of clouded drums beating a stormy anthem beyond the hills. Behind the mountains and the valleys masked by the verdancy of rolling green, the sky was marching forward with an unrelenting stride. It walked over ravines, stepped by gorges and trod oceans with footfalls that hammered at the earth below.

It was coming.

And as each day passed, it was that little bit closer.

Each day, his breath became more ragged. Each day, his sweat became colder. Each day, he hugged his knees to his chest tighter. Each day, he squeezed his eyes shut harder.

He felt it in his bones, the thunder playing along his ribcage like a child running a stick up and down a fence. The glacial spikes lodged between his vertebrae drove ever deeper into his spine. The field of ice that sat upon his skin grew colder by the day. It all grew worse by the day, worse as it all came closer to crashing down upon Konoha in an almighty tempest.

The sky was going to fill with rain and fall. The clouds were going to crackle and spark with lightning and fall. The heavens were going to stir with great winds and fall.

Five days before it all came down on Konoha.

Five days before it all came down on the Uchiha.

So, he stayed in his little corner of his little room of his little apartment, praying to whatever deity would listen to make the thunder he could feel rattling in his bones, the icy fingers stabbing at his spine, and the embrace of cold that wouldn't let him go disappear. He prayed for release from this pain.

But no one was listening.

No one listened, except Kaze.

While he sat dead awake in the dead of night, the wind sung a soft song for him. It went high, then low, high, then low. It went up and down, like a breeze over hills, or a flowing river of air over dunes of golden sand, gentle zephyrs in a land of wind and warmth where the sun shined brightly, always.

It was an ancient song from times long past, sung in halls and temples long sunk beneath the shifting sands of time and the shifting sands of a desolate tract of earth. The windswept cities of desert clay and brick, marked with mystic symbols and arcane icons, lay beneath the soft sands that lay beneath a harsh sky resting upon a harsher land.

And then the fifth day came.

As the rain began to fall and the sky began to roar, Naruto was not there.

His body was in a cold place of lightning and thunder, but his mind was surrounded by warmth and wind. Noise and wrath bombarded Konoha, made the buildings lean and the trees wave and bend and snap and fall under a torrential downpour of rain that mired everything in water. A world of grey and black mist lit only by lightning consumed the village in the night.

The wind joined them. But it was not Kaze's fault. Somewhere, deep in the dark of his head, he knew that more than anyone else could.

Kaze did not belong to just him. Kaze was more than just with him, within and without. Kaze was the wind, and the wind was for the world. Even when the rain was rushing to the ground and he was terrified by the bells of thunder calling in his bones, the crushing flashes of lightning and the chilling howls of wind outside, he knew Kaze meant none of it.

The demands of nature could not be ignored, even by the wind itself.

Rain needed to fall, thunder needed to roar, lightning needed to strike and the wind needed to howl.

And as much as it all scared him, the child that he still was, Kaze remained with him.

With the wind by his side, with his mind kept warm by thoughts of desert sands and ancient suns, he was safe.

Even when an earth-shattering boom rocked him to his core, and even when a bolt of light that swallowed everything whole made his windows explode into razor shards with rays of white rage, he was no longer afraid.

Though the sky screamed and the rain came down in merciless sheets of grey, the storm passed. The sky was blue once more.

As the thunder faded into the distance and he opened his eyes to a room torn apart by requested rain and demanded wind, Naruto still felt a rumbling echo in his chest.

The thunder, the roaring power of the sky, was gone. But the echo, the one he thought crafted by the hands of the sky, was still there.

In the midst of his waterlogged, wind-scarred room, Naruto searched for an answer.

Thunder brought lightning. The thunder had vanished into the sky, and yet the echo remained pulsing in his chest. But what if the thunder had was not the echo, had not carried with it the rumbling in the deep? What if that rumble, that quaking in the depths... was the _lightning_?

Then Kaze reminded him of a word.

But, with the storm out of his mind, out of his bones and out of his skies as Naruto stared at the strange new morning through his broken window, he saw it was not a word. It was a name.

Even on the clearest of days, it was a name burnt into the heavens with sigils of cataclysmic light.

_Raikou._

* * *

He didn't know what to make of it at first.

As he began walking to the Academy, something he'd missed for five days straight, the streets were muddy, dampened, drenched in places. Some buildings were damaged. Some windows were shattered, glass spilling out onto the dirt and the concrete. Wooden splinters littered the ground he trod. People were moving around him, gathering tools, the materials needed and necessary to start repairing the damages found in the wake of devastating weather.

The stream of cool air that flowed alongside him looped once around his legs in a tight whirl. Kaze would have apologised for the blows dealt by wind if people had the ears to listen.

The storm had been massive, a wave of impossibly dense cloud. Grey and black mountains had blotted out the sun and rained down thunder and lightning as they fell into the earth.

It took more than rain to frighten him, more than thunder or lightning of the mundane sort. They were natural things, things that had existed far before humans and would exist long after. But this was different.

The words Kaze had spoken to him, the fear and the pain that had made hollow noises inside his bones as the storm approached, all made him think this was different.

Then there had been that moment he first felt the rumbling beyond the horizon at dusk, when he heard the echoes and splashing travel along the Naka. He didn't know what that was about.

But all of it, every drop of rain and bolt of lightning that had fallen from the sky, had something to do with the Uchiha.

The night the storm had descended on Konoha was no simple matter of coincidental timing. Something had given the storm reason to come. Something had given reason for Kaze to utter the name _Raikou_ – a name he had yet to understand. And he was sure that something was in some way related to the Uchiha.

So engrossed in his line of thoughts on clans and lightning and rumbling in the deep and the depths, Naruto was barely aware of familiar treads pressing into the muddy ground, tapping away at the moistened dirt and slippery concrete with sandaled feet and a recognisable gait following at a decreasing distance.

But even when he was so entrenched within his own mind that his body followed instructions in a purely mechanical way, he was a being reliant on sound.

To the way he moved, walked, breathed and fought, sound was everything. With understanding and interpretation of vibration, the resonance of movement through the air, his sight was secondary. Even with his eyes closed, he knew what was around him.

There were limits to his hearing, of course.

There was a certain range he couldn't penetrate, sounds at a distance from his body he couldn't hear but rather feel on his skin. When there was no movement, his ability to detect surfaces through sound alone suffered. On the other side of things, if he moved too fast, the clarity of what he could hear decreased much the same. The sweet spot for sound changed with wind speed, humidity, air pressure, temperature and a number of other factors too abundant for him to determine on his own. It had taken him some time to realise that.

However, on a day-to-day basis, none of that really mattered. He could still easily tell through familiarity with the noise that it was Kiba walking ten metres behind and closing.

"Hey, Naruto!"

Naruto threw a quick glance over his shoulder to meet a happy wave and the grinning face of his friend. "Hello, Kiba."

With the heavy, pounding strides of his friend hitting mud as he approached, Kiba teetered to a halt next to him. "That was some storm last night, wasn't it?"

"Yeah," Naruto agreed, mumbling the words somewhat as he cast blue eyes skyward to brighter blues. "Some storm."

Naruto shook himself quickly out of his daze. "Oh, how's the Inuzuka compound looking?"

"Eh, not the best," Kiba shrugged. "There was a bit of damage to the roofing, quite a few leaks around the place, and the lawns are looking a bit ragged.

Kiba paused to look around. "The rest of the village is a bit worse off, I think."

Naruto did the same. At first glance, it wasn't all that bad. But the storm truly had done damage.

Trees along the path they walked were uprooted, weakened by rain and torn from the ground by unwilling wind. Buildings were chipped and scarred, battered and broken to a point that some had already been surrounded by cheap wooden scaffolding to support ailing structures. People were climbing the exteriors to survey the extent of the damage; workmen were fitting windows with new glass and taking down notes for needed supplies.

It was busy, demanding and full of activity. But it was unified, in a way. While entirely needed to repair the wounds inflicted on the village, it was still nice to see people working together for a cause greater than them alone.

Naruto turned back to Kiba. "How were the dogs?"

"Most of them were okay, but some of them don't really like thunder or lightning much. There sure was a lot of barking," Kiba said, rubbing a hand along the back of his neck.

He stretched his arms and let loose a long yawn. "Hardly any of us got sleep because of it. Don't be surprised if I fall flat on my face halfway through class today."

"You usually fall asleep in class anyway," Naruto chuckled.

Kiba grumbled his vague irritation. "At least I'm not as bad as Shikamaru."

Naruto nodded and smiled. "No one is as bad as Shikamaru. He's in a league of his own when it comes to laziness."

"Yeah," Kiba agreed with a laugh. "He could probably sleep through anything. That storm probably wasn't even enough to make him roll over in his bed."

Then Kiba sent him a suddenly quizzical look, pupils quickly quirking to the corners of his eyes. "Speaking of rolling over in bed, were you asleep for the past few days? You weren't at the Academy on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday."

Naruto offered him an easy grin. "It was something like that, yeah. But how was your weekend?"

When his eyes turned downward and he began to grumble and moan in the Inuzuka way, Naruto laughed. "How badly did Tsume chew you out?"

Kiba groaned. "It was more like she started chewing, realised I was still undercooked, and then threw me back in the pot to boil a bit longer."

Naruto didn't drop his smile. "I imagine you were anything but undercooked for most of all that."

"She waited until it wore off before she started tearing into me," Kiba sighed.

Naruto's smile dropped and his tone became slightly less cheery. "Kiba, I seriously hope you don't become a drug addict."

"Hey, it was one time, Naruto," Kiba said, raising two hands to try and fend off Naruto's concern. "It's not like I went out and bought some of that stuff or anything. I just found it on the ground, and it smelled interesting, so I took a whiff of it... and another... and then another..."

"And then you were out of it for the next day or so?"

"Uh... yes."

Naruto grinned broadly. "Yep, you're totally not an addict."

"One time, Naruto," Kiba groaned. "It was one time."

Naruto kept on smiling.

Kiba stared at him cautiously for a moment. "You're never going to let me forget about it, are you?"

Naruto looked up at the sky briefly before he gave a nod. "Yeah, I'm going to make this last for as long as I can."

"I really hate you sometimes," Kiba sighed.

Naruto chuckled. "You'd do the same thing to me, Kiba."

Kiba grinned. "And that's why we're friends."

* * *

The day went by as it normally did. It was full of classes, people, and information. Some of it was important, some of it was interesting, and some of it he found useless.

The beliefs of Senju Hashirama were important. The reforms to the shinobi system, the Academy and the bureaucratic process made by Senju Tobirama were interesting. The announcement to the girls that they would be undertaking flower arranging in their next class was something he found useless.

"Really?" Kiba laughed quietly. "They're going to teach the girls flower arranging? What's the point of that?"

Naruto offered him a simple shrug of his shoulders. "I don't know. Maybe it has something to do with infiltration, or blending in on a mission of some sort."

Kiba raised both eyebrows. "What sort of mission needs you to arrange flowers?"

"A flower-arranging mission?" Naruto answered with a question of his own.

Kiba just shook his head and kept on chuckling. "Well, at least we don't have to learn about the meanings of flowers."

"Flowers have meanings?" Naruto asked.

"Apparently," Kiba said. "I think Hana told me that once."

Naruto gave a vague tilt of his head. "That's odd."

Kiba nodded and grinned. "Yeah, though it's funny to imagine Hana learning about –"

"Stop talking back there, Kiba!"

Kiba cringed slightly. "Sorry, Iruka-sensei."

The teacher across the room sighed and shook his head before returning to the lesson.

_Yeah, flower arranging is funny._

To the girls, perhaps it was something interesting or important. To Naruto, it wasn't either of those.

Kaze had no comment to make, no whisper to utter in his ear on such a trivial matter. Usually, Kaze said something, whistled a word or a phrase on the slow breeze he could feel whirling around the room, unsure where to go.

But Kaze said nothing.

In the trails of air moving over his neck in dawdling eddies, there was a preoccupation. Kaze's attention was on something else.

As the day trickled away, he began to realise where Kaze's eyes that weren't quite eyes were drawn.

Down near the front of the room, in a spot he often glanced over briefly to see a clan emblem at the back of a high-collared shirt, was an absent seat.

He had assigned a vague interest to Uchiha Sasuke. Among the class, he was one of the most skilled. Though the offered competition was not particularly fierce, it gave some small credence to the clan's reputation for producing talented shinobi.

He was not close to Sasuke, but he noticed the absence, the empty seat and the oddly empty expressions from nearby girls glancing at the seat and then the door. Without a doubt in his mind, he knew it had something to do with the storm. But he had no idea what.

Within the next hour, Naruto scoured his mind, ignoring the classroom around him to focus on his thoughts. Yet no matter how much he thought, how many times he went over the possibilities, he couldn't come up with anything definite.

All he could surmise was that something strung the Uchiha, the storm, and the name Kaze had mentioned together. But, for the life of him, he couldn't figure out what.

As he and Kiba made their way out of the Academy's entrance as they often did, his ears twitched.

Somewhere down the crowded corridors of students leaving for the day and instructors finishing up their work, two teachers swapped stories, rumours and gossip.

He had heard them before, babbling on about the most mundane topics so horribly disjointed from one another it almost hurt. Their conversations jumped back and forth from subject to subject, practically bouncing off the walls as voices rose and fell on the strange tides of asinine discussion.

He had never paid any real attention to them before.

But something one said made him stop in his tracks.

Kiba turned to face Naruto when he halted immediately, eyes wide. "Naruto, what's wrong?"

Like he had nights before, he shuddered and shivered at the same time. One was in his shoulders, and another was in his spine.

It was all because of a single word: _massacre._

"Naruto?"

"I'm fine, Kiba," Naruto said with an easy smile. "Just thought I heard something."

Kiba nodded stiffly, obviously unconvinced.

But that didn't matter. This wasn't something he could share with Kiba, not something he could share with anyone apart from Kaze. But he suspected Kaze already knew.

Gentle currents of air followed in his footsteps as he and Kiba walked. A whisper of wind in his air confirmed his conjectures.

He asked why Kaze had not told him outright with a low whistle of his own.

And then, for just an instant, Kaze swept him somewhere else in answer.

Images and memories of white flashes and blue bolts filled the sky of his mind. He could see bolts dropping to the ground, falling on trees and homes and buildings. Fire ripped up in the wake of such powerful forces, but the hammer of the rain met the anvil of the ground and crushed the flames caught between. He saw desecrated abodes, desecrated bodies lying in bloodied and flooded streets thought safe behind tall clan walls. He saw someone running, but he could not tell if it was towards something or from something.

It was terrible.

The name – _Raikou_ – was called again.

He saw someone lying in deep, scorched ground, a pair of eyes open to a black sky of rain, wind and lightning.

The name boomed in the clouds once more.

Naruto began to understand.

Kaze provided the words.

_Massacre._

The storm had come the night of that evil.

_Atrocity._

The storm had come to return and restore, to give something when so much was taken away.

_Balance._

For every action, great and small, there was a reaction. The world was not a static place. Nothing within was truly inert or motionless, least of all nature. When the wheels of humanity began to turn, the world turned just the same.

In answer to an unanswerable question of _why_, Raikou had come.

Raikou had come for Sasuke.

* * *

The rain started coming down as a dark-haired, fair-skinned boy headed home slightly later than usual. It was dark out, but the clouds made it even darker, rolling into position with low rumbles and murky flashes of white and blue.

Sasuke started to jog, darting his way from cover to cover as the harsh drops chipping away at the ground grew heavier and the low, distant rumbling in the clouds grew louder and closer.

It wasn't long before he began to sprint through the crumbling mist, splashing down the street with every step, his bag held above his head to stave off rain falling like grey curtains on black plaster.

He found his way there more by memory than vision, turning down thoroughfares and slipping around corners he knew he just missed as he squeezed his eyes shut when a flash of white exploded in the sky and a wall of thunder tried to throw him from his course with a deafening shove.

He was barely at the front door when the wind began to howl and bellow. A torrent of slick leaves he could barely see tore across him as he struggled to force the door shut before it bit into the frame. With a solid click and a sigh of relief, he locked it into place.

Putting down his bag by the front door and kicking off his sandals, Sasuke ran hands through his drenched hair to pull a few handfuls of droplets loose and shake them impolitely onto the floor, right before he did the same to the drenched leaves stuck to his drenched clothing.

He never had liked storms. The sound of thunder and the constant tapping and dancing of rain on the roof always kept him up.

It usually kept his parents up just the same, but... there weren't any lights on. And there hadn't been any lights on outside.

Thunder crashed into the ground and white light erupted through windows. Sasuke felt something cold run down the length and breadth of his back, and he shivered because of the firm, freezing grip the feeling had on his spine.

Something was wrong.

No one had been out on the streets, running for cover from the storm falling down on top of them or calling out in warning and greeting both. No lights were on, nothing shining through windows but the garbled reflections of leaves caught in the vicious updraft shouting and smashing on the roof of his home when flashes of light fell from the clouds.

He hadn't heard a voice, a shout, a cry or a moan. All he heard was rain hammering at his home, wind making the walls creak and groan, and great glass jars of thunder shattering against the grand facade of the Hokage Monument and spilling lightning all over the sky.

His heart began to pound in his chest.

Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.

Breath suddenly became scarce.

He had to find his parents.

Before he knew what he was doing, Sasuke shouldered the door to the porch aside and was running across the saturated wood, an arm shielding his eyes from the deluge as he sped for the door to his parents' room.

He tossed it open and slammed it shut behind him, gulping down air faster than he could run.

"Tou-san, Kaa-san!" he shouted amidst an onslaught of short and shallow gasps. "Where are you?"

Lightning flashed through the window, and he saw them.

He saw them, and he saw the blood.

He saw them, he saw the blood, and he saw the crimson trail leading into the shadows.

His body, his mind, and his heart frozen mid-step, mid-thought, and mid-beat, Sasuke stopped straining for air. He stopped straining for anything.

He just stopped.

He just stopped and stared.

He stared down at his parents.

He stared down at vicious lines carved through red-brown clothes that weren't meant to be red or brown.

He stared down at the puddles and the pools spreading over the wooden floor until he couldn't see the wood.

He stared down at the empty eyes of his mother and father.

He stared down at the butchered bodies of his parents.

Thunder crashed above and around as blinding white light faded from the room. Rain came down faster. Wind howled louder.

"Why...?"

That one word was all he could manage.

And then, through all the raging, stormy dissonance, he heard a footstep echo off whimpering walls.

Sasuke looked up. "Nii-san..."

Stony-faced, armour-clad, Itachi said nothing.

He took slow, shaking steps forward. "Nii-san, what... what happened?"

Itachi didn't move towards him, didn't stretch his arms out or make any motion whatsoever. He was completely still.

"Tou-san, Kaa-san... they're..." He couldn't finish. He kept moving towards his brother.

Itachi didn't stop him.

But he still said nothing.

Sasuke couldn't take it.

"Itachi!" he screamed as he closed the distance, clutched frantically and cried desperately into his brother's shirtfront. "What happened to them? Tell me!"

He didn't see it happen through the tears.

His vision blurred as he was shoved bodily into the door, and then his shoulder began to hurt.

He looked to his left.

There was a shuriken in the wood. Somehow, over the rain and the wind and the roars of thunder, he heard something drip. His shirt split open a second later. All he could make out below was a thin trail of something like red.

"Nii-san?"

Itachi closed his red, red eyes. "My poor, foolish little brother. How I almost pity you."

Sasuke couldn't say anything. His throat refused to move for words, for breath as something red dawned on him. But his eyes could widen.

That was all they did.

Then Itachi's eyes opened as something else. "Mangekyo Sharingan."

The room, the thunder, the lightning, the rain and the wind – it all twisted.

White and blue became black and red. Blood crawled up and down the walls, across the floor and his feet and his hands and Itachi as his strange, strange eyes turned and shifted and twisted just like everything else.

Then they started coming.

The screams, the cries, the shouts.

Then the kunai into the walls, the falling to knees, the frenzied whimpers, the crying into the flooded soil.

And then the wave of blood beneath the rain.

There was so much blood. And the rain wasn't taking it away.

He couldn't do anything to stop it.

His eyes kept widening until they hurt.

He couldn't take it.

Sasuke screamed, hands clawing at his head and his eyes to try and make the flood of red go away, disappear and vanish. But it didn't. The blood kept flowing like water and Itachi kept killing them, slaughtering everyone he knew in the streets and their homes and their children over and over and over until there was nothing left but bodies and it all started again.

It kept going, and he kept screaming through his mouth and his mind.

It wasn't going to stop. It was never going to stop.

But then it did.

The twisting, the shifting, and the corrupted, broken world he had looked upon melted away in a tide of black and blood.

He found himself on a floor, his face in something warm and sticky and all too red as spittle and blood of his own dripped from his mouth.

This time, Itachi's black eyes stared down at him.

Sasuke, with so little left in him, looked up at cold, hollow pits.

"Why...?"

It was all he could ask.

"To test myself. To test my limits, my capacity. To see if I could."

It didn't... it didn't make sense. Nothing made sense.

"Why...?"

It was all he could ask as Sasuke climbed to his shaking feet with trembling legs as the room filled with white and thunder he saw everything – the blood, the bodies, the brother – again.

"Why did you... butcher them?"

Itachi's eyes closed again. "It was necessary."

"How... could that be necessary?" he asked, still shaking, still trembling. "How is any of this necessary?"

Itachi still said nothing.

"Itachi! Tell me!"

He had no idea what came over him other than red in his eyes and rage in his voice. But it amounted to nothing when he felt a fist reach into his gut and steal the air from his lungs and the strength from his legs.

Sasuke crumpled to the floor again, one step away from Itachi.

And then he wasn't a single step away from Itachi when his brother took one step forward.

Then it came over him. Fear came over him.

Rain fell harder. Wind blew louder.

Despite the storm and the thunder and the lightning, Sasuke ran.

A door, a floor, a patch of blood whirled by in a frantic rush. Then the whole world turned and spun and flashed as he slipped, lost his balance on the drenched porch and crashed into the swamped grass and the flooded courtyard beyond his parents' room.

The rain drowned everything. And then it drowned everything out with the aid of roaring winds. He couldn't hear himself cough and struggled to raise his dirtied, reddened head from the quivering, shattering screen of water below as rain tore at the ground and tore at his skin with kunai of cold and shuriken of ice.

The storm raged above, thunder shaking the earth and lightning slashing at the sky. But the screams still echoed in his head. The sounds and the sights of blood still rang in his ears and pulled at his eyes. Somehow, over the roar and the wails and the winds that began to uproot trees in the darkened distance, he could still hear Itachi.

In the wailing, screaming night ripped apart by bolts and blades of brilliant blue, he could still hear his brother walking towards him.

"Foolish little brother."

He heard it through a wall of thunder, heard it from the mouth of a shadow cast against a sky of white and black and lightning.

Sasuke stared up at the darkness through mud, through blood, through icy spears of rain and through the tears that threatened to overwhelm him. "You're... not him. You're not my brother. You can't be."

Itachi stared back. "The brother you thought you knew has done this to ascertain your capacity, Sasuke. I wanted to know your limits. I wanted to know your potential."

Sasuke could do nothing but stare up from the world of mud and rain.

"I was the brother you wanted, the friend you desired, in order to know what lay beneath," he said through thunder, his face a wall of rock and stone. "You wanted to surpass me in everything. You will live because of that. You will live for my sake."

Itachi's eyes swirled again into that strange shape of red and black. "These eyes, this Mangekyo Sharingan – none of it will come easily. To gain them, a sacrifice must be made. You must kill your closest friend."

Sasuke's eyes widened again, widened until they hurt more than anything. "Then... Shisui-san..."

Older clansmen had come to their door days ago, asking about Shisui's suicide. He had watched from behind a corner as his brother was accused by his own clan of murdering his best friend. He had thought they were insane for even thinking Itachi could do such a thing, especially when Itachi had snapped and beat them into the ground for their baseless allegations. Itachi had spat at them, decrying the clan's future and refusing to offer an apology until Sasuke had pleaded with him to stop the fighting.

In his mind, Itachi could never do anything so utterly _wrong_.

But his heart shook in his chest as he heard Itachi confess to his sin without a hint of an emotion beyond contempt and disdain carved into his face of rock and stone. "He did not die by his own hands. He died by mine."

Itachi turned to the storm. "As you are now, you are not even worth killing."

His strange, horrible eyes turned back to him.

"Foolish little brother. If you want me to pay, if you want to see me dead for my deeds, then blame me. Let your hate for me fester in the mud and the wounds. Cling to the pathetic remains of your life. Live on in shame. Then, when you and I possess the same eyes..."

The black windmills began to turn.

"Kill me."

Dark became darker. Black became blacker. Everything vanished beneath sheets of rain and cries of thunder.

* * *

He didn't know when he woke, but Sasuke woke to sound and sight, thunder and light.

Thunder gathered in the clouds, sparking and crackling and clenching fists of lightning into something greater than any single strike. It was something brewing, electrical waves of glacial blue churning in a sky more treacherous than any mere ocean. And those frozen waves of frigid thunder were about to crest, a savage sea of lightning receding from clouded shores before it surged back in a tsunami of blaze and abyss. Beneath that swallowing tide of endless shadows, those ceaseless lands of midnight-black and ashen-grey above that could do nothing but cry and cry and cry, something growled until the earth began to shake. Something deep and dark stirred in the heavens.

The rain slowed to spattering trickles, handfuls of water thrown out on the flooded streets and drowned dead, reaped fields sown with tears far before their time.

The mournful howls, the silenced shouts and haunting screams he could hear on the winds died away, falling back to the ground and sinking into swamped soil.

For the first time in what felt like years spent on his back in drenched, choked grass beneath bawling clouds and stormy skies, it was quiet.

But silence was such a fragile thing, broken by breath and woken with words.

It was the most ephemeral peace imaginable.

He stared up at the hushed heavens.

And he waited.

Rolling thunder crashed down. Silence was slain.

The sky opened up. Liquid light poured forth from the breach.

Nature's wrath, heaven's fury, sky's rage – it had been given countless names, but men called it lightning.

Sasuke named it death.

Sight, sound, and smell disappeared beneath a rush of _white_. There was no colour, no shade, no shadow. There was nothing but a lack of everything, a head-first plunge into sensory oblivion.

_Am I dead?_

The question fell on ears that no longer existed.

It echoed in a world wiped clean of touch and smell, sight and sound. It echoed in a realm left blank and featureless, a barren wasteland in a way that could not be described because there was nothing to describe.

But it echoed.

There was something for it to echo off, a skull for his thoughts to bounce around in, a mind for his memories, and a head to contain his departing sense of self.

He wasn't dead.

He smelt singed soil and cooking clay first. He saw fading clouds and a struggling silver moon through unstable eyes second. He heard the pitter-patter of rain on ruin third. He tasted foul dirt and something ashy on his tongue fourth. He felt the drops of water hitting his skin disappear in wreaths of steam last.

None of this... made sense. Nothing made sense anymore. He was naked, covered in the cinders of his clothing at the bottom of the burning crater that had once been the courtyard of his home.

All he could think was that there was no way he could've survived.

The sky had opened up, let loose a spiralling, forking fusion of gold and blue that streaked down like a bolt of molten fury and struck him into something less than nothingness.

He should've been ash.

But he wasn't.

He was alive, and he was breathing.

And he couldn't understand why. He couldn't understand why he was alive, why he was living when so many weren't, why Itachi had killed them, or why he could hear electricity ringing in his ears, feel static crawling up and down his spine, and sparks of light drifting in the heavens like embers of lightning.

He couldn't... he just couldn't.

Tears started to fall down his face once again, only to vanish in curling strands of saline steam as electric fields ran across his cheeks. It spread from cell to cell, from tear to tear in webs and forks and shards of lightning.

The rain had poured until he was bruised. The wind had blown until he was anchored to the ground. The thunder had cracked until his ears rang. The lightning had struck until he couldn't see.

His senses had been stripped from him one by one. His family had been stripped from him all at once.

Everything had been taken from him by his brother.

And now his tears had been taken, too.

He had nothing left, not even his misery.

The storm was leaving. The thunder was rolling away. The lightning was dwindling.

He had nothing.

Then he heard it, a whisper in his ear like wind but not. He felt something inch along his skin, from cell to cell and tear to tear, spark to lightning.

_No._

It was a crackle, a spark of something voltaic in his ear but a word in his head.

And he had no idea how.

His lips were dry and cracked like his skin. He could barely move them to make a noise, form a word with his mouth and his tongue behind sounds of a cracking, breaking surface. "What..."

The word sounded empty in emptier air, useless noise roiling in a swirling vortex of raining dust and nothing.

The last thing he expected to his question, now of all times, was an answer.

_Lightning._

But he got one, neatly tucked somewhere in his whirling mess of a mind that mistook desperate delusions for objective reality. Yet, somewhere in all that chaos, a part of him latched onto the madness.

He wet his lips again, and did his best to speak with a croaking voice. "How..."

Vibrations from somewhere deep and faraway made the crater shake, loose dirt falling down in slow billowing clouds.

_Storm._

Either he was losing it, or he wasn't alone in his head anymore. "Why..."

_Balance._

He didn't understand. "Why... I don't... get it."

This time, when the ground began to shake again and dirt fell down from the edge of earth above him, blue sparks rode the dust down, fields and webs of blue and gold and everything else spiralling every onward like dying embers in a cool night's breeze.

He expected searing pain, burns to shoot up and down his arms and scorch him until his skin was cooked and black when shards of electricity, conducted between tiny specks of airborne metallic dust, came into contact with him.

All he felt was... warmth. Warmth descended on him like gentle summer rain in a passing springtime storm.

All he got was an answer.

_Flesh and blood have betrayed you. Lightning will not._

His eyes widened until they hurt, and he grasped what he could feel in front of him with both longing, searching hands he could barely move.

"Please... prove it."

It came in a rush of _everything_.

_Look. Feel._

He could see it. He could see white clouds in a blue sky above white-capped peaks brimming with an atmospheric intensity he could feel humming in his heart and drumming in his chest. He could see images, pictures and feelings, memories of a bygone era walking into the present with strides of times and places long forgotten to snow and ice. He could see something beyond visions of blood and gore and death filling the streets of his home run through the belly by his brother's sword. He felt something more than bone-dry ducts, bone-dry dirt layered on bone-dry skin, an ash-stained sky and an ashen moon.

Even when everything had been stripped from him, torn from him, taken from him, there was something else for him out there. He could see it in the lightning in his mind and the static fields whispering in his ears. He could feel it in his bones, an understanding that wasn't his and a quiet, clamouring confusion besetting his strained mind that was.

There was so much more than slaughter, so much more than death, and there was so much gratitude packed into what little remained of his heart, more than he had ever felt in his life.

Despite himself, despite Itachi, despite everything, he smiled.

Sasuke, beaten and broken in a blackened, burning crater forged by lightning of the greatest kind, smiled a weak, agonising smile. "What... what do I call you?"

In the electrostatic sensation surging across his skin, making the few hairs at the back of his neck stand on end, he felt a smile in return.

_Raikou._


	6. 5

_From the Zenith_

_Scroll 295; Memory U51_

_Category: Cycle of Lightning and Wind_

_This will play out again._

_It always has. It always will._

_We must fight, once and then twice and then both of those again. It will not always be the same. It will not always have a victor. There will not always be death. But resolution is temporary._

_We must always war, as we always have, as we always will._

_Wind must roar. Lightning must blaze._

_For those who live, die, and then live a thousand times over, these truths must always be._

* * *

He lay on his back, on his bed, awake, blinking slowly as the moving curtains above his head took on colour. Dawn approached, the sun slowly climbing and clawing its way through last night's cloudy sky.

Kaze both liked and disliked the sun, armed with ultraviolent ways and ultraviolet rays. It was a forceful thing, eternally rising without care, without caution. The warmth it brought was vital, essential to all things below, but it cared little for the benefit to life. It did what it wanted, burning and scorching and drying and boiling whatever stood below. Kaze called its heat _harsh_, but named its warmth _kind_.

In the mind of wind, heat and warmth were separate beings, each with a body all their own, yet simply rising from the same progenitor. Warm wind embraced; hot wind stifled.

No matter Kaze's ever-moving stand on the sun, Naruto looked at it differently.

He liked dawn; he liked dusk. He liked day; he liked night. The cycle was what he valued, and at least the sun had kindness enough in its smouldering heart to let the moon soothe the earth to sleep. The time of day did not concern him, because the wind moved regardless.

It was always moving, always flowing, everywhere and anywhere it pleased.

_Except..._

For the last two months, there had been a blank spot in the airstreams above Konoha. The sky was the domain of many things at many times, but wind ruled above all. And yet there was one place, in the centre of a jagged void, in which wind did not dare to tread.

Across the village, burrowing some way into the defiled grounds of the Uchiha, something built high into that region of dead sky. Lightning and thunder had come and gone, but a mark was made and the very air knew it. He was attuned to sound, synchronised to resonance that made the bones in his ears jump and dance with the slightest of vibrations. Energy still crackled and sizzled above in that space to those who had the ears to listen, and Naruto could hear it even now as he lay awake. And he was so very, very awake.

It kept him awake, night after night.

He didn't know if it was the sound or the deep-set trepidation coiled tightly in his chest, but one or the other kept his eyes open when he wanted them closed. More than anything now, he just wanted some sleep.

Yet Kaze had told him to wait with a breeze through the trees, with a shifting whistle through the cracks in his old building's concrete, and with a gust that made his new window shake in its frame. Kaze told him to wait for the dust to settle.

Vagueness was a part of it all, just as it always had been. He had no way of telling what Kaze truly meant, because he knew nothing of lightning in the way he knew wind. But he imagined the surfacing of Raikou had created immense dissonance in a realm recently calmed.

The presence of one was a boulder in a river. The presence of two was a mountain in a pond.

The water _needed_ to settle, or it risked breaking the banks, overflowing into the world and drowning everything. But, of course, that was his reasoning. It was not Kaze's.

So he asked again, with a louder voice and greater wondering.

The answer changed. Kaze told him to wait for the _spark_.

Sleeplessly, he awaited it. Two months passed him by, but nothing came. Though the rumble of thunder in his bones was gone, the echo of lightning above continued to deprive him the few moments of soundless darkness he sought.

And then something changed. He felt it on this golden morning, a strange pressure that finally descended over him and over Konoha. The sound in the heavens, in that ringing, lifeless swathe of sky of sometimes-blue and sometimes-grey, faded.

Naruto lifted himself from his bed, looked out his window to the birth of a new day, and drank in still, fresh air, finally free of the volatile touch of lightning. Wind resumed its flow unhindered, rightful domain returned to its rightful master.

The voltaic dust had settled.

As the passing minutes became passing hours and the sun rose higher, Naruto wondered on the nature of the _spark_, on what he didn't know of it. He didn't know where or how it would arise, simply that it would. Energy would build and build to a point where it could not be contained until it tore loose and sparked with all its gathered might.

But with the rising pressure, with new and unknown measures of force pressing against both him and the wind, he could pass one... no, two partially precise judgements.

The first was an answer to when. The ascending sense of static in the air, the indistinct crackling he could feel playing along his face, led him to believe that today was the day he would face the _spark_.

The second was about who it would come from. And that was simple enough to answer.

* * *

From his back, on his bed, beneath the blanketing ring of an alarm early in the morning, Sasuke stared up at his ceiling. With little more than a shuffling of sheets, Sasuke was on his feet, reaching into the cupboard, pulling on clothes, cooking something briefly after he was dressed, and then out the door and into the clear morning air before he knew he was even walking.

He blinked once, then twice as shook his head at the unthinking, mechanical nature of his morning. Morning had been a time of waking and awareness not so long ago, something he hated but couldn't stop himself from enjoying as he smelt fresh loaves baking down the street, the sounds and the yawns of his father rising to meet the sun, and the vision of his mother looking down at him with a smile warmer than the coming of dawn. Now it was something he had emptied, cleaned out to make room for the... changes in his life.

Memories and reminders were the first to go. For the first month, he grieved at their graves, wept at their pictures and prayed at their shrines. And then he was done.

He had to be.

To stop himself from falling down the gaping holes in his road, to walk past those ditches and dikes filled to the brim with spilled blood and spent memory, he needed to stop thinking about the past. To move into the future, he let the weight of the past at his back drive him down the slope.

Walking past the newly flattened courtyard of his home, Sasuke trod the lonely streets with no more company than the dust underfoot and the sparks on his shoulder.

The Uchiha district was painfully quiet.

He remembered the noises, the chatter of happy homes, the aimless ambling from store to store, from conversation to conversation with everyone he knew, every member of his proud, stoic but wonderful clan full of wonderful, kind people. But they were gone now.

The images and the echoes faded from view. He moved forward still, his hands in his pockets, his mind retreating all the more back into his head as he shook himself free of achingly familiar sound and sight.

It had been two months since that night, two months since everything solid in his life had been uprooted, turned on its head and buried beneath six feet of dirt and fifteen centimetres of violent rain. And in that time, he learnt two things, the greatest of their kinds: loss and lightning.

It was the latter that kept him breathing through the vicious agony of the former.

Sasuke kept walking.

At first, he had considered that always carrying someone, or something, in his head with him would be inhibiting, that he would always be looking over his shoulder, cautious of being judged or derided by a voice no one else could hear. He had thought it would be like having someone breathing down his neck for the rest of his days.

But it wasn't. It wasn't like that at all.

His initial thoughts were a cosmic misconception, entire worlds away from the truth.

Raikou was not human. Therefore, Raikou did not think as a human did.

Sasuke did not know whether it was an inability on Raikou's part, or some difference of celestial degrees between a mortal being and a force of nature, but Raikou did not judge him, did not deride him, and did not breathe down his neck. Raikou simply sat on his shoulder, watched the world with him, and offered small tokens here and there about everything he could see, hear and feel.

Even then, he doubted that truly encompassed all that Raikou was. He just didn't have the words to describe Raikou, because Raikou wasn't human. Words were for the men who spoke them, not for the lightning that had no need of them.

He had realised over time that what he heard when Raikou spoke was not words. What he heard was electricity crackling in the air, over his skin and in his chest that he could actually make sense of. Raikou's presence had given him an odd capacity to comprehend more than words and sounds and feelings. He could interpret those electrical sparks and tiny shockwaves into something his mind could understand. As he was human, it became language. His mind turned thunder and lightning into words.

And those booms of thunder and flashes of lightning in his head that became words he could cling to when he needed it most saved him in the end. In the end, it was Raikou that saved him from himself.

There was so much _hate_ flowing through his veins like liquid fire. There was so much _misery_ burning in his gut and tearing at his throat with bile night after night. There was so much _grey_ that settled over everything and anything in an eerily calm shroud that drained the world of all life and colour. It had threatened to swallow him whole and leave a walking corpse of hatred and despair in his place.

Even if Itachi had not killed him, Itachi still would have killed _him_. The Sasuke left in his place would be little more than a hollow shell forged in isolation, a machine of flesh and bone driven by vengeance and spurred on by a desire to murder his creator.

But Raikou kept him intact, stopped it all from taking over. Raikou kept the Sasuke that could see something beyond death and loss in the world living. Raikou saved him from the depths of his own despair.

He could still feel the fire in his veins, the burning in his gut and the bile in his throat. But he could still see colour. He could still see worth in the world.

And it was because of Raikou.

He vaguely recalled something in the Academy library some time ago, some arguably inane fact about biology. Life ran on electrical signals, bioelectric impulses running through muscles, sorted by brains, spread along the pathways of nervous systems.

Electricity let them live.

Lightning, a part of nature, rested at the core of life and function.

And now he could see it.

Perhaps sight was the wrong sense to attribute to it. Perhaps it deserved a sense of its own. Either way, he had suddenly been made aware to the presence of electricity since Raikou had come thundering into his life.

In the rare moments in those months he had ventured from the Uchiha district, as he walked people by, stood next to other living, breathing beings and brushed against clothing as he weaved his way through crowded streets, he could feel electricity in the air. And he could feel it in them. If he focused intently, concentrated solely on what he felt, cut out the world around for just a few instants, he could almost see the lightning running through their bodies, see the electricity coursing through arms and legs as they walked and talked and breathed and lived.

When he stood on rooftops and looked down as he concentrated as hard as he could, it was even more amazing to see different voltages, the differing currents in different people passing by, connecting and disconnecting from each other without even realising it and passing by some more. In those people, he could see blue and gold and yellow and bronze flowing through the streets, all the while crackling and buzzing like rushing streaks and surging currents of lightning in a river of storms.

It was beautiful.

There was more to it than just a strange sight of alien splendour. Within a certain range, he could sense electrical energy, and that included the bioelectricity generated in the human body. With enough practice, he knew could hone that sense into something incredible.

And beyond that, he realised Raikou had let him tap into something greater than himself, let him see how much more there was in the world than just him. Raikou showed him sights he had never seen, sounds he had never heard, and a way of understanding a world so incredibly vast it was frightening. His hate, his rage and his misery were suddenly dwarfed by the overwhelming sense of awe he felt as he looked out with new eyes on a new world.

He still felt his scarred and scorched emotions churning away within, but now he felt so much more moving without.

It had been two months since his last day of attendance, a month of grief and a month of epiphany. But now it was time to go back and face the world once more. With revelation in one hand and gutted emotion in the other, Sasuke walked from his old home and back to the Academy with Raikou on his shoulder.

* * *

Naruto barely raised an eyebrow at the sight laid out on the desk across from him. "You're asleep already, Shikamaru?"

Nara Shikamaru snorted something that sounded like a negatory, though it was somewhat muffled by the fact his face was pressed into the desk he lazily slumped himself over, fingertips of his left hand barely stretching over the far side's edge.

Naruto heard the obvious "No" with the usual obscene level of aural clarity. Kiba didn't.

"Is that a yes or a no, Shika?" Kiba asked, tilting his head down to Shikamaru's level.

Shikamaru turned his head ever so slightly upwards, a dark eye groggily moving sideways to stare a hole into Kiba's face from the sanctuary of his crooked arm. "Okay, Kiba, I'll bite. What do you think?"

Kiba leaned back into his seat, hands clasped behind his head and a smirk on his face. "I think I managed to disturb your nap. That's good enough for me."

"Damn troublesome Inuzuka," Shikamaru muttered before squashing his face back into the dark corner of his elbow.

"Lazy Nara," Kiba grinned.

Shikamaru grunted from the refuge of his arm. "Whatever."

A noisy crunch of teeth on chips preceded the leaning over of Akimichi Chouji, a curious look passing over somewhat pudgy cheeks marked with faint red swirls.

"You know," he drawled out between chips, "you really shouldn't let him get to you, Shika. It'll just make him try harder to piss you off."

Shikamaru groaned into the right-angled bend of his elbow. "You don't think I know that?"

Chouji shook his head with a half-grin before he chomped down on more potato chips. "It's just a suggestion, Shika."

Naruto couldn't help a quiet laugh at the amusing scene playing out before him, much like it often did.

Typically, it began with an observation from him, a continuation from Kiba, a vaguely argument-like exchange between him and Shikamaru, and, finally, a comment from Chouji routinely disregarded by the lazy bum sitting – though just barely – next to him, though it rarely stuck to any particular standard format or subject matter. Such were the interactions between the lazy one, the loud one, the peacemaker, and the observer.

It was a conversation much like that one that made them something of a circle of occasional laughs, something helped drain the boredom and monotony from the day-to-day life of an Academy student. Iruka-sensei had little tolerance for antics during lessons, but the five-minute respite they were given in their teacher's absence for the sake of chalk retrieval made a brief chuckle a possibility.

He heard footsteps, but they weren't Iruka's. There was something about the sound of casual, distant slides of sandals out in the hall that made him think the wearer was preoccupied to an astounding degree. There was the chance he was wrong – states of mind were not always reflected in gait – but he wouldn't know until–

The moment the door slid open, Naruto felt it.

The air changed, and the wind stirred. The natural pressure in the room spiked unnaturally, yet no one seemed to take notice of it. All they took notice of was the boy they hadn't seen for two months walk into the classroom without a word of greeting or an acknowledgement of presence. For them, the only difference was a sudden dip in noise.

Sasuke moved in quietly, hands in pockets amid something like stunned silence that vanished by the second. Hushed talk resumed in a different direction, hushed and pointed at the familiar newcomer in a familiar setting. It was whispers, unsubtle gestures centred on the one they somehow ignored but spoke of all at once.

Naruto watched Sasuke, watched dim eyes set in a pensive face move across the boards and turn away as he slowly returned to his unoccupied seat.

It made so little sense. They all knew what had happened. The news had spread like wildfire. For those first weeks, it was all anyone talked about, and thanks to his greater sense of hearing, he heard it everywhere. He heard how Sasuke's own brother, considered the one of the greatest shinobi of his generation at the age of thirteen, had slaughtered his own clan without warning. Uchiha Itachi had swept through his people like the storm that followed in his wake.

If they knew all that, then how could they talk about him so obviously, make such plainly insensitive comments to the one they were sure couldn't hear them when he was right in their midst, stuck in the middle of an inadvertent crossfire of needless gossip and baseless rumour? For a minute solid, they talked about him, yet somehow kept him at an arm's length. He was there for them, but they were not there for him. In a room full of people, Sasuke was alone.

The muttering and the whispering died away in time, yet it all failed to reach him. There was a wall no one could see; their noise and their sound touched a barrier without their knowing. Perhaps he was keeping them out with conscious effort. Perhaps he couldn't hear them, too enthralled by his own thoughts of atrocity and betrayal.

Naruto couldn't help but wonder at the truth of his lack of reaction.

The mere mention of that thought rolling in his head made that feeling of pressure return to his mind, that oddly familiar yet entirely unknown presence weighing down on the wind starting to move around him. He'd felt it before. But the name slipped him, just on the tip of his...

As fingers of air tapped down once on his shoulder, he felt Kaze's meaning.

"Oh," Naruto mumbled out far below his breath. "Raikou."

It was barely a whisper, barely something that could qualify as sound if it was only his ears that heard it, and yet Sasuke's eyes snapped back over his shoulder, almost startled at the sight of him, but most certainly shocked by the uttering of that name.

Then it was all true.

_"Later,"_ Naruto mouthed silently.

Obsidian eyes deathly wide, Sasuke nodded ever so slightly.

He heard hushed footsteps treading the boards outside their door. Iruka-sensei slipped in without a word, pieces of chalk in his hand and a thick book under his arm. The lesson was soon to resume.

Naruto forced thoughts of lightning into the back of his mind.

There was still time for the _spark_.

* * *

The day drifted away, out of reach. The sun had reached its peak, offered them all a final yawn of midday heat, and began wandering its way back behind the mountains. As shadows began to lengthen, patches of darkness stretching through the trees and over the small crowd of his classmates gathered in a green field bathed in orange light, Naruto found himself struggling to pay attention.

It was something about chakra, something about the strain on the body if one's reserves ran too low for too long. There was more to it than that, more complex than simple, but his mind was elsewhere.

It certainly seemed that preoccupation was the word of the day.

Sasuke had barely said two words since he had arrived. People had come up to him, offered him condolences and handfuls of help-is-here-if-you-need-it. At first, it seemed genuine. There were running noses and falling tears from some of Sasuke's female admirers, looks of worry from the teachers that had passed him by, and even some given concern from their class' male population. And then it wore thin. The kind words were repeated; the same sad, worried glances showed up on face after face; every tear started to look the same.

Throughout it all, Sasuke was quiet, walled off from the world as he blinked and nodded without words at every look of sympathy, every spoken moment of supposed empathy.

Naruto wondered what it looked like to Sasuke, the people offering him spoons to dig through the dirt pile of his grief when he needed shovels. Was it insulting? Did it dishonour the name and the memory of his clan? Was it appreciated? Were they precious tokens and mementos when he needed them most? Or was it all ignored? Did he simply want to be alone with his pain, alone with...?

_Raikou._

Then Naruto realised he wasn't alone. Sasuke had a friend, just as he did. He had a constant companion, an endless source of gusting comfort when he needed it and the reassurance of a cool breeze when he was...

And then he realised it wasn't the same. He could draw endless parallels between them, and they would still be different right down to the core.

Wind and lightning were not the same, no matter the form they took.

His mind strayed from elemental thoughts, back to the scene of the present where Iruka-sensei was ending a lecture.

"It's not enough to be able to mould your chakra correctly. It needs to become second nature. If you have to concentrate on your chakra every single time you attempt to bring it out, it can only lead to disaster. Out in the field, you will never have that one moment you need to summon your chakra at the right time. No matter how exhausted you may be, no matter how much strain your body may be under, your chakra must always be at your fingertips."

He paused for finality's sake with a wide grin. "That's why we are now going to run through various exercises until you're all sweating like mad and gasping for air."

A collective groan echoed Naruto's personal sentiment.

* * *

Naruto never enjoyed the feeling of breathlessness. Airless lungs caused a dry, heaving sort of pain in the throat that refused to pass until the wind came back into him. It took quite some time to get him huffing and puffing his guts out, but Iruka-sensei had managed by having the entire class run through a nasty mix of constant push-ups, pull-ups, crunches, circuits through the trees and laps around the entirety of the training field that didn't end until every single one of them was falling flat on their faces, struggling to move as much as they were struggling to breathe.

The sweating, gasping, smelly mess that was Kiba was just next to him, face-first in the grass, his reddened and dirtied arms and legs spread so wide it almost looked unnatural. Shikamaru, despite the overall lack of dirt and grass stains, seemed about ready to welcome death with open arms, sitting up just barely and staring at the orange sky with half-lidded glassy eyes. Chouji just looked like a quivering pile of sweat and skin, but Naruto kept that thought to himself.

There really was no point in poking the bear.

Naruto rolled onto his back, tilting his head and arching his back ever so slightly to gaze upon the smug face of Iruka-sensei.

Though he lacked the temperament of a volatile sadist, their teacher certainly had quite the taskmaster's streak running through him. The self-satisfied grin at their communal pile of bodies didn't help dissuade him of that particular truth.

"Okay, class," Iruka said with a clap of his hands. "We're nearly done for the day. All that's left is to practice moulding your chakra while you're all sweaty, dirty and breathless. If you can do it when you're just about to collapse, you can do it without a second thought when you're ready and fresh."

And so it began.

The class, one by one and then two by two, rose to their feet slowly, unhurried with the presence of racing hearts and pounding heads. They formed something of a disorganised crowd, uneven rows and columns strung together haphazardly across the grass as they heaved and groaned the moment before they all made the Ram seal.

Left hand above his right, fingers resting loosely over one another, Naruto focused.

Chakra was a strange thing. He did not think a malleable force, something solid but not, could be called anything else. It lay within, energy pulled together from body and mind moulded into something made of both yet existing as neither.

Now, as his muscles burnt without fire and his lungs wheezed, chakra did not come easily. It never came easily, but it almost... _refused_ to come.

Chakra flowed through pathways spread through the body, a system much like the one powered by his heart. It simply pumped through veins and arteries of a different kind, flowing to and from a central point. As the heart was the core of humans, chakra was the core of shinobi.

They needed to reach it at half-a-moment's notice, always dancing at their fingertips and twitching along their pathways as it merely awaited their command. But he struggled to bring his to bear, found difficulty in making his chakra his. It resisted his pull, ignored his orders. It was as much a part of him as his hands or feet, his arms or legs, and yet it did not do what he wanted.

This... was different.

The strain on his muscles as he tried to make the chakra in his centre swirl into something useful was almost palpable. It was written on his face in lines of sweat, trailing down his neck and back in hot and cold streams, and swimming in the air like... _pressure_.

Away from his clenched hands and clenched eyes, Naruto looked up.

Across the grass, a number of distancing steps from the crowd of their classmates, Naruto saw Sasuke. He saw Sasuke struggling in silence, the wall between them and him intact but crumbling by the second as his concentration slipped back and forth until the partial facade of impassivity fell.

Cracks of effort and focus broke out across his face as he concentrated between the puffs and the gasps passing over red cheeks and dry lips. Naruto could hear those cracks spread up and down Sasuke's arms and legs until he could almost see the tension present in every muscle, every second and third fleshy fibre and strand. The fractures and fissures of struggle and strain were almost real, almost tangible in the chakra he could almost hear.

_Chakra..._

A whisper of frozen wind washed over him, suddenly chilling and spine-shivering in the heated, sweaty, fading daylight. It was a cold breath on his shoulder as... _death... beckoned..._

He heard the sputter and sizzle of static run through the dark rifts he could see on Sasuke's pale skin.

Naruto's eyes widened. "Sasuke."

In the quickening streams of orange warmth filtering through the gaps in the leaves and the ever stretching shadows, alarmed dark eyes met enlarged blue amid sudden golden sparks drifting from his skin like moment-bound fireflies in the strangely glacial air.

They both felt it.

Everyone around them felt it. Pressure returned five times greater and the air became deathly cold. He could hear eyes widen and breath shorten as wind began to move around him, faster and faster until lines of grey materialised out of nothing, spirals flowing against rising sparks of gold and bronze and blue and white.

They all felt it, so... much... _pressure_.

He could feel it building within, the bubbling chakra stirring through his insides lifting up and taking on the weightlessness of air, just as the wind without took on an eerie whistling pitch. It was pressing without, slamming down hard on trembling skin just as it began to steal his breath, make his entire body descend into tremulous shakes, make his vision twitch in his own skull.

And the showers of sparks falling from Sasuke's hands and shaking body were doing the same thing to him, caught him in the same frigid wind filled with floating embers.

Then, there was a voice speaking loudly, to everyone around them and to the both of them. But Naruto couldn't hear words. It was just noise from a familiar mouth he couldn't see and could barely hear over the growing breeze as blurred shadows retreated from them.

It was so _cold_, so_ deathly intense_ as images flowed into his mind of... something.

_In the middle of a grassy plain, they met._

And he could see grass blanketed in orange below his quaking feet.

_In the centre of a raging storm, they clashed. _

The bitter wind was on the rise, and the rainbow of lightning shards was growing in every possible way.

_At the core of all nature, wind and lightning fought for supremacy, wailing and sparking._

His eyes widened even more. _Sparking..._

Everything froze.

Two seconds.

Two_ seconds_ was all he had before it all came thundering down, descending on them both with the fury of a tempest. All he had was two seconds and two fistfuls of wind.

The world thawed.

Naruto threw his sight to the auburn sky and pushed outward with all his shaking, trembling strength of body and spirit.

"Kaze!"

_Wind_ roared. _Lightning_ blazed.

Arctic winds circled lightning shooting into a darkening sky like crystal trees of shining blue, ore-streak veins reaching for the frozen surface from the caverns deep below. That surface was rolling plains, the grassy centre of a storm brewing on the ground.

Through the haze of his head, the draining and the paling of his skin and his mind, there were screams. From people.

They were in danger.

And lightning reached for them.

_No..._

Wind roared once more.

A teeth-rattling gale howled into blustering existence, sending earth into the sky and blotting out the sun, cutting off striking arms of gold-blue at the pass with a sound that shook the heavens.

Everything was swallowed up in grey. Even them.

He could feel nothing but all-consuming cold. He could see nothing but raging wind and furious lightning. He could hear nothing but the demonic screeches of wailing wind and the unholy thunder left to roll and roil in the wake of burning strikes of light.

This was worse than that storm that had delivered Raikou unto the earth, gifted another element to another being of flesh and blood just like him. This was worse than the storm he knew in his shaking, cracking bones had hit Konoha even harder on the night of his birth, when Kaze had came tearing down through the firmament, ripped the sky asunder all just to find _him_.

This was ancient opposition, natural enmity reaching back into the youngest days of the world, a time so long forgotten he couldn't begin to comprehend it. And it forced them to their knees, robbed their lungs of precious air, and made the horizon veiled by a mountainous windstorm and apocalyptic thunder tremble even more than them.

Blinded by lightning and deafened by wind, they stood in the presence of storming creation for a single moment, right before it all came full circle in tempestuous destruction.

For the two at the centre of it all, there was nothing but flashing white-blue and a flesh-flaying hurricane of coldest grey that loomed above all else.

Teeth rattled in skulls and skeletons shook madly in skin as gales upon gales of tormented air twisted around them, tree-trunk tendrils of grey smashing against an inferno of lightning flaring up from the ground with a sound that threatened to split their soundless, sightless heads in two. Forces so much greater than any they had known tugged and pulled at bones of men and earth. Beneath the ceaseless rage of wind and lightning, bones of both kinds cracked and broke as they dared to come within reach of the storm, building and building until it finally shattered into realms of silent oblivion with earth-quaking resonance.

A ripping tower of wind reached into the turbulent heavens, and the burning heart of lightning blazing at its centre cast them down thrashing into the torn and tattered dirt.

Their world, and the world around them, dissolved into swimming visions of raw agony and rawer bodies amid a shattered plain of broken grass blades and uprooted trees.

For Naruto and Sasuke at the centre of a departing storm, there was nothing but black.


	7. 6

_F̘ͮ̌͛̒̽̚r͉̙̝̰̣͑ö̼͉̠̞̽̕m̗͔͍̗̻̬̓̋͛ ͎̼̣͐̂t̲̠̭͇ͯ͗͆̂͛h̞ͣe̙̤̓͂͐̎́̓ ̴̘̰͚͑A̵̳͇̯̩̖ͭ̐̌̎͛ͩr͖̤͉̝͈͕c̵̙̜ͪ̆ͨ̎͑̓ͯh̤̦̞̋͒́̂̿ī̩̝͓̫͕ͣv̰͇̤̫̟̞̰e̍ͥͧͫ̑̓  
̵̳͕̟̭͓͇ͫ̅Sͧͥͤ͛ͬ̏͏̯̲̮̘̥c͈̉r̝̀o̞͓̱̍ͨ́l̥̣̈͒́́̚͝ḷ̷͉̮̭͆̋ͭ̈́̒ͯ ̞̖̹͐ͤͧ͢1̪̪͙͓̍͆̾̍̐̓͜ͅ9̈̆̋̓̀9̶̝̥̼̹̼͓͊̌̇̚̚̚9͖͂̾ͤ;͚̳̟̙̔̔̐̏ ͓̖̮̬̪͈̫͑͐ͩ̄̓ͭ͒͜M̔ͩ̓̎̚͢e̫͙͔͈̱̥̫͐̐͞m͕͇͍̥̫͌ō̗̆̏r͓̘͕̐͆ͦ̀͜ỳ̊̉ͮ̕ ͖͈̪̏͗̌̇̈́U̷̳̙ͧͦ5̞͖̳͚̘̩͇ͯ̾̾  
̨͈̠͚̱͉̯̯̿͋̅̔̽̓C̨͚̲̥͙̭͆̓a͉̗̻̽͒̽̃̎̔͆t̴͚̣̣̹̥͓̩͐̍̾̐ͪ͛e̩̟͇̮͉͇͖ͣ̾̽̄̆g̘͈̋͂̍̎͐͑ȍ̻̙̭̯͔̆͗́̚͜ṟ̟͊͊͛ẙ̭͇͈̖̲̬̄ͩͣͪ͒̔͡:̳̺̩͇͍̃̿͆ͣͅ ͢E̬̽ͪ̈̎̚͜Ŕ̯̬͕̳̘͊ͅŘ̸͕̻͔̪̈͑O̤̜̞̰̅ͤ͒͑ͅͅR̢͚̠͓̥̅_

_ah._

_so this is where theyre all stored._

_strange._

* * *

_Why?_

_Why did he have to dream like this?_

_It was meant to be a refuge, a place that held time he could truly lay claim to. But it seemed a home for more than him alone. It was not a sanctuary of peace._

_It was a world of ink._

_An endless sky was not discernible from a ceaseless ground. He had no inkling, no clue of the time he had spent caught somewhere between sleek plains of black, always somehow glinting with reflected light twisted into strange and unknowable patterns through the darkness. And then there was him, standing or sitting or lying somewhere within the cavernous gloom, his senses of sight and time lost to him in equal measure._

_A knowing of time was determined by night and day, by motion and movement. But there was no motion to see, no movement to glimpse and gaze upon fleetingly with his unseen eyes, nor was there a sun to watch rise and set. Dawn and dusk held no sway over this dark realm, nowhere to be found in the deepest pits of this seeming void._

_Just as time was._

_And with an understanding of what was lost to him in the nadirs of this strange darkness, he began to grasp a simple truth: time did not live here._

_Without time, nothing could be seen, movement could not be made, light could not reach, and the wind could not blow. All he knew occupied space, and space was nothing without time. Finding a world lacking one distorted the other into something that sat beyond the scope of all recognition._

_Realisation made unknown sounds echo in the dripping nothingness._

_Looking out onto the abyss, eyes still unseen, the sound of turning paper filled the air and scrolls appeared from the deep murk._

_That was why he called it a world of ink._

_As a scroll fell before him far too neatly and unfurled of its own accord, stained white page strong on a canvas of pure black, he remembered that this had already happened, and he recalled the images shown to him, the countless scrolls that had appeared before him again and again. _

_It was never the same scroll twice._

_It unfolded before his eyes with slow deliberation, rolling with no small manner of care across a surface of rippling darkness behind. Unrolled in entirety, an almost sequential filament of strange markings written in deep ink appeared on the paper. He did not understand what he saw._

_Perhaps they were of a language no one knew, a foreign tongue forgotten on the forever turning pages of unwritten history. It could have been a title, a name, a number, or a directive. There were countless possibilities for the unknown words before and below, an infinite quantity until one was chosen._

_He did not know why now, just as he had not known each time before, but he chose number. The runic inking faded from the scroll, and a picture emerged from the new slate of off-white._

_Had he been afforded the time to pose his dark world a question, he would have asked why such a seemingly minor decision made progress a possibility in the void and the scroll. But he could not ask his question. There was no time for questions._

_There was no time for him, no time for sight, no time for sound._

_There was no time at all._

_There was only the space, and there was only the scroll. _

_There was only the scroll, again and again and again._

_And the scroll's image was familiar, always. Each image was similar, and each image was yet not the same as its predecessor._

_But no matter how many times it vanished and reappeared before him, he could be nothing but impressed, shocked and awed at the sight on the scroll. He could be nothing but at a loss for words when he gazed upon eerily similar vistas, painted and portrayed with an incredible, impossible tenderness that left him gasping without lungs time and time and time again. It was all somehow communed through simple black ink._

_What he saw was a sky filled to the brim with carefully swirling clouds in early morn marked by a flock of small birds, a dark and dirty ground skilfully mired in cold, unfeeling grass, and two utterly unique figures standing across a tract of callous ground from one another, staring or glaring with eyes, or watching and waiting through the aid of something else, with the otherworldly assistance of something at their backs about to erupt into something truly and strangely familiar._

_Each time it came before him, he forgot what it was that stood behind them without truly standing. It was nothing legged, nothing armed and nothing bodied. What stood behind them and with them was something _embodied_. It was something each of them, no matter who they were in their moment of silent conflict, had come to personify. He did not what trials had been thrust upon them, but their suffering had transformed into _something_ made flesh and blood and life written in ink._

_But as he gazed closer, eyes hidden in the dark, it began to return to him._

_He looked ever closer at the world scrawled on the ink-washed scroll._

_The artistry was of superb detail, walking well beyond the boundaries of mere obsession with realism, and driving hands and eyes deep into the black, warped realms of the zealot. Somewhere in the middle of it all, the painting began to approach a surreal plateau, a safe haven of sorts resting between the lofty dream of an idealised sky, and the grimfaced beauty of reality's cold, bone-dry grass._

_As he found his mind sitting on that same trodden tor, on the very same plateau the scroll's maker reached for, it made him forget that every detail – right down to the delicately splayed wings of the birds taking to the air at the coming of dawn's early light – was painted with the same simple ink._

_And then the scene of two beings facing one another across a vast expanse of grassy plain began to move._

_Immaculate detail gave way to impossible sight._

_The clouds began to move, coiling swirls of grey-lined wind urging them away. Those same coils brushed at the back of the man stood on the left, making the light, leathery clothing he did not recognise ripple and waver in the gust sending clouds of dust from the west to the east over frosted grass. A mouth turned from impassive line to shaking snarl, teeth bared for the entire world to see._

_On the right, on the ground and on the other man clad in thick cloth and ringed metal, lines of black light sparked and danced. Jagged lines and veins crawled and dragged in short instants, making headway up and down the body's entirety and a small part of the ground's totality. The air around him crackled and trembled._

_The world around them did much the same as they threw their hands to each other._

_Wind from nowhere and everywhere lashed out with fearsome force. Embracing arms of lightning reached for the sky with bright and blazing intent, smashing and spreading over strands and curls of wind in explosions of grey light and flares of black wind._

_The to-and-fro, the back and forth of furious wind and ferocious lightning was directed and conducted by their hands, the motions of their bodies as they themselves moved like the elements around them. They danced and dodged, spun and leapt, all the while wielding wind and lightning like weapons, using them to fight and hurt and maim and kill with blades of wind and swords of lightning._

_A tornado came tearing across the ground in mere moments, shattering earth and ripping up everything in its wake. A bolt the shape of a thunderous dragon came crashing down from the chaotic wreath of circling, swirling clouds that was the inky heavens above. They collided in an almighty display of force, a mere slice of divine calamity brimming with twisting gales and flashing electricity thrust into stormy skies, sending beams of light down on their destruction._

_A battle, awe-inspiring in scale, raged from the scattering of morn's rays to the charcoal descent of eve's sun. For hours unrecalled, wind and lightning waged war against each other, as unrelenting as their wielders. Wind wailed and shrieked and howled. Lightning roared and streaked and cried._

_In his place of soundless, sightless, timeless darkness, he could hear the tumultuous events of the scroll echoing around him. Somehow, he could hear every breath swallowed in haste, every crack and scream of lightning and wind rushing past to meet violence with violence in the core of the page, along with every word shouted between them in a harsh, guttural language he did not know._

_The sounds and the sights lasted until dawn returned anew._

_The two men he saw in the renewing grey of warming light were torn and leaking ink in places, cupping scorched and sliced wounds as they themselves began to crumple inwards, exhausted beyond all measure. At the end of everything, it seemed as if they wished to sink into the ground on their hands and knees, demanding the earth to open up and accept them into the fold of endless slumber below. But it would not heed their call._

_These two beings were children of wind and lightning. While wind dared to whisper and lightning deigned to crackle at their backs, on their shoulders and in their souls, earth would deny them rest just as it had so many times before._

_And so he remembered what it was that stood behind them without truly standing, what was with them as long as they lived and breathed: wind and lightning._

_But how could he have possibly forgotten something so important?_

_Yet he did. At the end of every scroll, every time he saw such a similar scene in this black world of his drenched to the core so utterly in ink, the memory and the understanding vanished in entirety as he refused to believe a fundamental truth of each and every scroll: the absolute futility of it all._

_No matter their identities, their genders, their lives, their trials and tribulations, their conflicts and disagreements, their victories and defeats, even their very species, they were all children of wind and lightning ordained to carry the weight of cyclical fate on their backs again and again and again._

_These children of storms and hurricanes bore the terrible responsibility of their progenitors on their shoulders, struggling and heaving and shaking beneath a strain unlike any other. They would carry it until their lives came to an end, in their clashes spread over a lifetime or in any of the unexpected twists and turns life took for better or worse._

_But, even in their ends, there was no real end. There was no true conclusion._

_In the end, their struggles and their deeds amounted to equal fistfuls of nothing. The cycle would continue long after they departed the world of the living. The forces of wind and lightning would never rest. They would fight again and again and again, until the end of time or the end of the world – whatever came first._

_This time, and only this time, he acknowledged this truth he despised._

_With the sound of rustling paper and the turning of pages, the scroll in the darkness before him rolled shut._

_And then, for a few moments, the visions of ink inscribed by ancient hands on older scrolls did not come again. The watcher was given a moment. He was given time in a timeless world to think._

_Wind and Lightning..._

_Had these two forces existed in rivalry, subsisted in singular spheres of acidic contention since the dawn of time? Was there ever a moment when they themselves had paused to think, just as he did now in the short space between painted dreams?_

_Were Wind and Lightning – theses two brothers of a kind he could scarcely understand – doomed by mere virtue of fate to war and rail against each other until the world around them collapsed under the strain of their undeniable power?_

_If this was true, then what of the others? Were Water and Fire forever shackled to eternal conflict, just as Wind and Lightning were chained until the bitter end? Did Earth live beyond this infernal cycle of opposition, or was it merely free to hate all its brethren for defiling its rising and falling body, daring to shred and drown and strike and scorch the lands forged from its molten soul?_

_The scrolls in the dark rustled and turned, and his sightless eyes were reaffixed to seas of flowing ink. _

_He had seen each scroll before. One by one, their shaped streams of ink trickled away before his eyes, the same events in black playing out again and again and again in front of him on a countless number of pages. _

_Now, they all came together at once. _

_An innumerable, immeasurable display of painted memory stretched out like an infinite castle's walls before him, reaching from one endless side of the ink abyss to the other in a river of moving page and parchment._

_Something within the body he could not see clicked into place. Something deep and dark and primal became known and light and conscious, rising to the surface of the mind he was barely aware of amid the ocean of unfurled scrolls filling his unseen vision with impossible displays of power and force, raging wind and furious lightning._

_Somehow, deep in his heart, he knew it would be different this time._

_Somewhere, deep in his heart, he knew this cycle would not remain standing for unending perpetuity._

_Someway, deep in his heart, he knew that there was something in this world that had not been there always, something that could help him put an end to what would not. _

_Eternity was coming to a close because of..._

_He knew the word. He could hear it floating along the surface of his mind, ever present and shouting its name to him from a distant shore across the greying waters with all its might. But it was so far away, being dragged through the ashen sand and into the obsidian jungle by chains of ink, by a world that refused the change, a nature that denied evolution as it sat atop its volcanic throne looking out over a darkening archipelago stranded amid black seas. And then it was captured, imprisoned beneath jagged mountains and spewing geysers of fire._

_But it did not matter. It continued to shout out its lungs below the ground, to rattle its chains fastened to the heart of the world itself and strike at the black bars that kept it from brightening the dimming skies with every solitary iota of strength it could muster. The world wanted it gone, but it could not kill it. This was a beast that refused to be slain, as adamant that it would not die as the world was. After a thousand years of trying and failing, nature could hold it prisoner no longer._

_The cage shook violently and shattered into nothingness deep below the ground. The captive within flowed from its shackles, permeating the earth and everything that lived on it._

_It was all for the sake of eternity's end that the prisoner was free._

_He remembered the word._

_A clap of thunder in the dark made his bones shake. A starburst of brilliant blue flashing and streaking and crying in the endless sky of black above made him smile as he quaked. A rush of familiar wind in the deep made his trembling heart soar._

_Time had returned to his world of ceaseless ink._

_The black skies ruptured; the canvas of pure black began to split at the seams; the endless fortress of scrolls cracked and crumbled and disappeared in the explosions of blue that rocked the void to its empty core. The all-consuming darkness retreated in on itself at the coming of dawn._

_In the growing glow, space linked astral hands with time once more. The distortion of everything he knew into something he could not was undone; frayed reality spiralled back into patterns that made sense again._

_And it was all because of that one word, that one thing that let them break the chains of infinity._

_It was all because of the one word he remembered: _chakra.

_The crumbling world that once more made sense fell apart beneath the coming of morn, and Naruto himself fell into the transient space between dreams and the waking world._

* * *

_The passage he walked through the dark held voices. None were truly discernible. He could hear the voices, the tones, the kinds of people that spoke with them, but he could not hear their words._

_He walked that dark passageway in a strange haze, treading the halfway line between dream and reality. The images he thought were floating in the murk could not possibly be real. The voices he heard had to be much the same. It was all a haze he stumbled through as he made his way down a path paved with nothing, not even dirt._

_There was nothing real here and there, nothing of substance. It was just the halfway line after all. And then he crossed the halfway line's halfway line. A flicker of white appeared in the distance, and reality was but a few lumbering steps away._

_The voices kept muttering, murmuring, whispering, shouting and talking. Conversation floated on rising and falling waves in the odd darkness, much how he imagined oceans did on a daily basis._

_He saw those floating in the gloom as well. There were images of flowing water and frothing whitewash, vistas of glistening seas stained with blood, rage thrashing in hearts just as the waves did on the shore as ghostly crimson arms tore someone to pieces in front of a young boy..._

_How strange._

_He saw a mountain, too. There was stone that flew into the sky, accompanied by marching legions of slow, heavy flames, and there was burning pain that filled the body of someone below it all. It was less clear than the ocean._

_How strange._

_He saw something like a sprawling town of white near the sea, but split apart by immense disaster of some kind. There was great sadness in the ruin, city and soul both. Again, it was less clear than its predecessor._

_How strange._

_Throughout, voices rose and fell, passing his ears by without so much as a thought given to them by him. But, almost at the end of it all, a mere step from the flickering white, he stopped when one of the murky murmurs suddenly became clear._

_"I have watched over the world for some time. I knew they would wake once more. But I did not expect this. I did not expect the wind to choose you..."_

_There was a name. But it escaped him as dreams became the fleeting things he knew them to be once more._

_Black became white. And then white became midnight blue._

* * *

There was a great difference between waking and being waked.

The former was to follow the paths laid out by the circadian rhythms of the body, to arrange life around them as so many did, and to expect to open eyes to the sight of morning. The latter was to throw cyclical nature out the window, to trust in an alarm or the hands of a human or the paws of an animal to stir the sleeper from their rest. That trust brought with it an element of uncertainty to sleep.

An alarm could malfunction, causing one to wake early or not at all. Emergencies or fears or many other human things could drive one to be waked by matters of urgency in the middle of the night. An animal's movement could jostle a bed in just the wrong way, startling the occupant to a sudden state of alarmed alertness.

There were many ways to wake up. Perhaps it was a number equal to the many things one could be woken by. Alongside them both sat the many different times to be woken at. But when all was said and done, it came down to choice, preference and habit.

The habit of Uzumaki Naruto when he first woke was not a usual one. His was to keep his eyes firmly closed and his ears wide open. In his mind, sound reigned supreme in the morning. It was a wondrous thing, yet it was a sad thing most often neglected for the sake of the sun. But there was only so much variance in light, only so much song the sun could sing. In the end, each morning melody played out the same beneath the sun. It rose at the dawn, only to set at the dusk, always tinted the same kinds of colours.

The sounds and the songs of wider nature were not so limited. Each morning, each evening, each day and each night was different. Different sounds, different songs, different birds, different insects all came together in a new way, a new disorganised, disjointed cacophony each and every day.

It was a wonderful thing to hear in the morning, so he kept his eyes closed when he woke up to soak in as much as he could. Far before his eyes woke to the world, his ears were up and moving.

That was the only reason his eyes didn't snap open when came to in the middle of a frenzied storm of _sense_.

Sound exploded in his ears with every slam of his heartbeat against his chest like booms tearing the sound barrier apart, every drip and drop of the leaky faucets down the hallway outside the door like thundering drums pounding at his head, every piercing blare ringing out from the machine nearby like a cold chisel chipping away at screaming stone, every single painfully shrill _chirp_ of the crickets in the garden below the scarcely open window coming at him like the echoing cries of damned souls crawling out of whatever hell resided so far beneath the bed he felt frozen in.

The _bed_ with sheets like rolling hills of sandpaper threading his skin into bloody ribbons, freezing teeth of too-cold air chewing at his face, claws of week-old sleep dragging in the cracks and crags of his eyelids, the vacant jostling of something metal lying sharp and jagged in his arm – it all _stabbed_ into his body and his brain as he barely found the strength to even stir in the centre of all that ear-splitting_ cognizance_.

His stomach churned and churned, bile rising and gurgling low at the back of his throat when the nauseating scent of thick, gooey sap dripping from the tiny cleft in an old bird's beak as it fed from a tree at such an ungodly hour, the gut-wrenching smell scarcely worse than the booming echoes of the drops of sap _splattering_ on the bark again and again and again.

There was no thought, no time for anything other than pure terror as sound, touch and smell surged to the forefront of _everything_ until it overwhelmed everything itself and sent him spiralling down into an agonising _awareness_ that threatened to tear him apart.

It was all pouring in through his ears, his nose, his mouth; it filled his mind, his veins, his lungs. He was drowning in an ocean of liquid sound, choking under a glacier of frozen touch, burning away beneath magma-falls of molten smell.

He felt _every_ _single thing _around him, living and breathing. He was so painfully, terrifyingly aware as they merely _existed_, because that mere existence – composed so thoroughly of their sounds and songs, the nature he held so dear to his heart – was _splitting his skull in two_.

There was no more room for anything inside. Yet it all of it still wanted _in_ when he was full. It kept falling down on him, splashing and storming forward in a deluge of neural overload, swelling his head and mind, his body and soul until he was one more _drop_ away from his entire being bursting under the pressure.

Anymore, and he would come apart.

Anymore, and _sense_ would kill him.

To dream in the dark, stripped of time and lucid awareness for so long, only to wake up to _screaming_, _ear-bleeding_, _mind-crushing_ reality – it was quite a way to go.

In all that time, he barely stirred, barely twitched his tortured fingers. His eyelids scarcely moved as darkness held his sight captive. His nose didn't twitch as scent assaulted it with every noxious, putrid weapon it had in its midnight arsenal. His ears were frozen stiff as monstrously amplified sounds of the ordinary kind ricocheted in the bony confines of his skull, almost ready to fracture from the sheer strain.

In all that time, his one wish, lying languished at the bottom of that fearfully vast mountain of agony and _sense_, was to hear the wind one more time before he was crushed into powder and dust by noise and pain and an awareness that stretched his mind to the breaking point with nothing but the truth of what was around him.

The truth of everything around him was... was... swept away by the wind.

Like a switch had been flipped on the anguish rolling through him, burning and freezing and drowning and bleeding, a rush of air flowed through him. And just like that, his mind was free. The pain was gone.

He could breathe.

For the first time in what felt like a meagre fraction of eternity, one day in a span of time that would live to see oceans dry and mountains crumble and build again and again, he could actually _breathe._

And it was glorious.

But that frenzied tempest of sense and awareness wasn't gone. It had simply moved, trembling clouds of ferocious black still hovering near and circling above. Now, he rested on an uncomfortable bed at the eye of the storm, and bathed in the cleansing winds that washed his smouldering veins free of fire.

Kaze's presence continued to fall on him gently, a living breeze slipping through the scarce crack between sill and window. Peace came on the wind, and the rampant tension plaguing every scant centimetre of him left with it. He was tense no more.

For a moment long awaited, Naruto was left to breathe beneath the slightly irritating interruptions of some beeping device near his bedside, and the pointed twitching of something metal in his right arm. He ignored them both, turning his attention to the gentle flow of air through that narrow, narrow gap below the... window.

It took him a few seconds, mind processing rather slowly, to realise that the window wasn't actually open. It was shut. There was a thick, locked latch that held it tight, metal bars curled tightly around the window within the confines of a wooden disguise.

Yet he could still feel the window trickling through the internal structure, a tiny breeze swiftly traversing even smaller honeycomb tunnels of timber and steel before it rushed into the room, fresh particles smashing headlong into their damp and dusty brothers, excited wordless greetings filling the space between them.

It was that microscopic gust that carried so much with it. It carried so much sound and smell and touch and _nature_. It was that minuscule zephyr that had delivered unto him a furious cataclysm of impossible sensory detail that overwhelmed him without the mere possibility of struggle.

And it found him so easily through a path he thought removed to the wind. He did not know why.

He asked his question in the newfound silence of his mind: _What's happening to me, Kaze?_

Air coiled around him; images and sights came in the darkness of his eyes still shut firm, but not as they had before.

_Never_ as they had before.

The backs of his eyelids were no longer black, but marked with... shape and line. It was shifting white and grey layered against an inconsistent background of swirling shadows. It was something he could make sense of, a picture he could build on.

It was the room around him, its dimensions and contents stripped of defining colour and texture beyond the flat and featureless, leaving him to look upon the purity of plain form and the clarity of blank outline. But it was more than recognisable, and he could see what was within it.

He could see the shape of the beeping machine next to him, linked to his left hand by a clamp that exhibited little pressure on his skin as it led a wire back to its home in the box-like form of the device. He could see the intricate proportions of the needle dug into the bloodstream of his right arm, affixed by flexible tubing to a bag full of liquid of some kind that allowed it into his body.

Without even moving his eyes, he was able to view all in the room around him with unparalleled ease, though the lines and the shapes shimmered and flickered before him. It was almost as if something rolled off them, distorting their composition in... waves.

_Waves... soundwaves... echoes..._

His eyes would have widened at his realisation had they been open. But now he knew what he was seeing inside his head. He was seeing _sound_, the echoes of the most indistinct vibration in the air as objects shivered on the smallest scale.

But that scale suddenly grew larger and larger until he heard a deep pulse of _something_ run through the room, over his skin and into his own chest where he felt it resonate in time with a beating pulse of his own.

_Heartbeats..._

His heart beat in his chest. He could hear it, feel it with his hands, and ignore it as he pleased.

His focus in the skeletal image of the room he had built for himself snapped to the pulsating, quietly trembling outline of a human he had overlooked, so enraptured by lines and echoes and shapes and complete lack of colour in his little world of sound.

He could not ignore the heart he saw moving in their chest, nor could he ignore the steady, watchful pulse he heard beating against their breast.

With each resounding, pumping beat, echoes of a heart spread like heat over blank skin and clothes, sending a single wave of vibration just beyond the boundaries of their ghostly outline. He watched on, entranced in small part by the warming shivers reaching halfway across the room and fading gently.

His colourless gaze wandered up the human shape, traced bodily curves beneath thick, armoured clothing. Beneath a mask and a cloak, it was a woman. And she was watching him, the room, turning her head ever so slightly towards the window. More than that, tiny circles of noise spread from her face and from her eyes. He could see the waves when her sight shifted, just not to where it shifted.

Why was she here, in this unfamiliar room holding a bed, him, a beeping machine of some kind and a needle dripping liquid into his bloodstream?

_Oh..._

He was in a hospital, but the woman wasn't a nurse. Judging by the infinitesimally quiet sound of metal clinking against metal from pouches on her hips and a longer piece from her back, she was an armed kunoichi. She was an armed kunoichi standing in the room with him, watching, her arms held carefully and confidently by her sides. It was easy to both hear and see that she was a guard.

Ripples of sound along the wall that held the door to the room alerted him of... two more people outside, their hearts even and steady through the walls, just like the woman nearby. He could not see their outlines as easily as the first, but by height and build, they seemed to both be male. Going by their proximity to the door, he assumed they were guards as well.

Focus slipping inwards, his mind concentrated on other things.

This combination of hearing and sight was... strange, to put it briefly. It was more than strange, though he tried not to dwell on it in the current moment. He did not doubt that it was Kaze's doing, but it could wait. What he wanted to know, after the storm in his head had passed, was why he was in a hospital.

His memory was blurry and distant at best, shrouded in a thick layer of misty dreams and distorted visions. His mind was still recovering from a sensory beating of immense proportions. But there were people nearby.

Outside the door, walking the hallways, conversing amongst themselves in the break rooms down below, drinking tiredly from mugs, washing blood and grime from hands, checking through lists and making notes in files – there were people in the hospital, staff and patient alike he could hear through the walls and the floor. Someone had to know what had happened to bring him here.

If they didn't know, then there were the guards. There were the two outside the door and the two...

_... And the two in the room with me._

He hadn't felt it, seen or heard it at first. He had been far too distracted, entranced and enthralled by a newborn facet of sense playing out before closed eyes. But there was someone else in the room with him, another heartbeat echoing off the walls in almost total silence. He could not identify its source, not within the normal dimensions of the room he found himself in.

And it irritated him. Somewhere deep down, he found a growing speck of annoyance with that someone he could hear but couldn't see. He searched the room, scoured it up and down across the space and the shape and the line, all the dimensions he could imagine that existed within this solitary room. But he found nothing.

The heart continued to beat, driving waves through the room from a direction he could not discern, from a point in space he could not seem to recognise with this newfound insight of his. He knew they were here. It was just a question of where...

And then he felt it, stronger than before.

_The window..._

His focus snapped to that far left, past the woman and her weapons, past the glass and lock that was not locked to the wind. Beyond it, in the darkness, someone waited, their heart daring to beat like a war drum, taunting him to find them. It was just a question of where...

_The wall..._

It was thicker there because it led to the outside, a wall that faced nature. Sound did not travel well through the material. But that did not mean it was denied passage entirely. Everything was porous, if only to the slightest degree. Air moved through the tiniest cracks, the smallest holes in a surface. The air carried sound, the beating pulses of hearts.

_Heartbeats..._

He felt it stronger still.

And he felt it _there!_

His eyes snapped open. Colour collided with form, tinted and tempered with midnight blue. It was strange to readjust to. But then he began moving.

He moved from the bed. He did not know why. The air moved with him. He did not know why. But before he had time to pose his questions to any who would listen, his left arm reached to the windowed wall of its own accord, his hand raised and fingers splayed wide.

The motion of his arm beckoned forth the wind. The wind came.

It was not the wind he knew.

The air rippled before his hand, building and squeezing and looping and coiling until it finally had enough and wanted release from the bonds of flesh that held it firmly to the earth. A tangled accumulation of white and grey wanted release from his palm. It wanted out. It wanted out. It wanted_ out_.

_Let go._

An unshapen mass of _something _came loose from his hand with a bitter shriek.

The world froze, and he heard sounds.

The crickets stopped chirping. The people below stopped moving. The metal of drawn weapons stopped clanking. The bird drinking sap from a tree at an ungodly hour took flight in fear.

Grey lines roared through the room, and fangs of ice chewed at the limb that dared it forward. Deep slashes swept up his arm in an instant spiral, one turning loop of red thrown out into the space by unseeable razors. Blood on the tempest's breeze spattered and streaked, just as the entire room was blasted into chaotic disarray with a tormented screech of freezing winds.

He hit the floor. Something sharp and pointed tore a chunk of flesh free from his right arm. Pain ravaged his body and pounded at his head. And then he saw the wall.

Past overturned machines slammed into the groaning floor, something had _ripped_ the exterior wall apart, a jagged wound carved up and down through a veneer of splintered wood and a barrier of ruptured brick. The window had disappeared, the remnants of wall were leaning perilously out into the chilled night, and he was lying in front of an upturned bed, gazing at it all beneath the far-flung moonlight pouring in through a far-gone divide.

It was devastation, cold and simple.

And then it began to slip away.

There was furious movement, sandalled feet hurrying past the streams of midnight moon filtering through nothing but open air let in by an opened wall.

Animal masks and armoured hands descended upon him, tapping him in places and checking things around him. Then voices came, unheard at first but eventually crossing the sea of ringing that suddenly flooded his ears.

"Can you hear me?"

He did his best to nod to whoever spoke. But it was difficult when his arms kept leaking so much red onto the broken floor and into the sterile white of his hospital gown.

"Hey! Stay with me, kid!"

But the voice was getting quieter, even as it came in the form of shouts and heated breath against the cusp of his ear.

"Come on! Get someone in here now!"

And it was getting darker. It was already dark outside, now that he finally opened his eyes to a world of colour, but it was getting even darker. It was like his vision was... fading. So, too, was sound.

More shouts filled the air as running filled the halls. Panicked tones echoed off the remaining walls but fell on deafening ears while the world shifted away from him.

Sound went first. Sight went second. The heavy heartbeats he felt pulsing in the air around him went last.

It was dark again.

At least there were no scrolls this time.


	8. 7

_From the Archive_

_Scroll 1; Memory N2_

_Category: Life_

_As was told to me, death is natural, but it is unknown to us and will remain as such._

_When a living being is born, it is granted five shards, one from each of the Five. These are little energies separated from the whole, the dimensions where the Five dwell both apart and alongside one another. In this way, each life is a gift. But energy is expended over time._

_Sometimes it happens over years, decades. At others, it occurs all at once, when one of the shards is made to cease its function by disruption of the whole. Time is irrelevant, for death is certain. At some point, the shards must unravel and depart. The soul must split and return to the realms from whence each came, each little piece sent back to its initial infinity._

_Body to Earth; heart to Fire; cradle to Water; spark to Lightning; breath to Wind._

_It happens, but we do not know how._

_The Chosen may change form and shape through the cycles, but the memories of each will remain. Yet we do not remember death. Death is known by the departed, but not the Chosen. We may cause it as is required, as is our right, but even we blessed few are not granted knowledge of the realm beyond all realms._

* * *

There was a lot to sort through. Two days awake, and he'd only scratched the surface.

Naruto found himself with a great deal to process. There was a small mountain of dissonance tumbling through his mind again and again like an avalanche on replay, but he couldn't touch it before he dealt with what was entirely new.

His sense of smell had become much stronger since he'd woken up for the second time. And he began using it by taking in the scent of the building around him.

After two days of silently sniffing from his bed, he realised that the entire hospital seemed to be composed of two smells in particular: blood and ammonia. The entire hospital smelt of bodies and steriliser, dirt and cleanliness. Two opposites were meeting in this place, neutral ground they shared in the midst of some silent, medicinal war. Like the waves meeting the shore, the hospital was the one place both could coexist for a brief moment when the sterile came crashing down on the sullied with tidal force.

He didn't like it.

Naruto shook his head and began to listen. Though not quite as new as his sense of smell, his hearing seemed to be the more useful of the two.

Confined to a single room, hearing gave him means to observe what happened beyond his four walls. People came in and out in various states of being. Some were healthy while some were sick. Some were bandaged while some were bleeding. Some were hanging to life by a thread while some slipped beyond the threshold of the living.

The hospital served to fulfil a role, a need: to heal those who could be healed, to save those who could be saved. But it was a need created by conflict. If the conflict wasn't there, if the source of the injuries and the blood and the death he could hear roaming the halls of this sterile place in the dead of night was removed, there would be no need for the hospital.

Naruto shook his head once more, and moved back to the day he was not in.

It was a strangely beautiful day. He could see that much in the fluffy, formless mass of clouds that drifted on peerless blue skies beyond the confines of his window. He would've much preferred to be out in the expanse of that day, sitting in a field of grass beneath a tree's cool shade as he watched the sky from someplace where there was simply more of it to see.

Instead, he was here in this guarded hospital room he was not allowed to leave, even for something as simple as to use the toilet. On that note, bedpans were just another reason for him to dislike the hospital. There was more to it than that, however.

The first time he had tried to get up from his bed, a silent alarm tripped. A nurse came quickly through the door and ushered him off his feet and back to the bed. The second time was met with much the same response, but with a second nurse poking her head in through the door. The third time was accompanied by the unexpected appearance of one of the guards, a cloaked ANBU agent materialising from nowhere and placing him back on the bed in an instant before disappearing back from wherever she had come. The message was clear by then: _stay in bed_.

But each time it was sent to him, it came with trepidation.

Each nurse handled him very, very carefully. The contact was far too delicate, far too distant for it to be normal. That much was clear when the nurse that looked through the doorway had been shaking like a leaf as she stared at him with ever widening eyes. Even the guard, the same poised kunoichi that had been in the room with him when he first woke up, had made incredibly cautious contact with him, as if pressing against him too hard would shatter him into a... _million pieces_.

All too clearly, Naruto recalled the damage he had done.

It was one thing to throw a shuriken at a shaking branch in the trees when something startled him when he was about to start training, but it was another thing altogether when he destroyed a hospital room when he found himself somewhat on edge.

Naruto sighed, both to himself and Kaze.

Kaze, through the window that was not as restrictive as the last, sighed with him. He was glad the wood of the frame was not so dense and compacted as the last, even if only by negligible magnitudes. Though the metal latch and lock was just as firm, air moved through the few open channels with superior ease, fresh winds diffusing into the room as they breathed and moved and _lived_.

"What do you think about this place?" he asked of the wind finding home with him in the room.

It had been some time since he'd conversed with his friend with his voice. Offering his thoughts to Kaze in conversation felt like a denial of sorts, a rejection of a part of Kaze's being. He much preferred to speak aloud to his friend, to allow one voice to be answered with another. It felt so much more personal that way.

There was a series of low whistles that came through the gaps in the wood of the window, each at a different pitch from the last. He was reminded of musical instruments in some small way, like the oddly restricted sound a wooden instrument made when held just a little too tightly.

Naruto nodded in recognition. "You don't like it either. Figures."

The faint breeze that followed his words brought something else to light.

"Well, at least it all happens in one place," he agreed with a nod.

Kaze echoed his agreement with a gust strong enough to make the painfully white curtains drawn back from the window shiver at the wind's touch.

His friend was right. If all the healings and the bleedings and the deaths were going to happen regardless of his thoughts, at least it all happened in one place. It was eased the pain for all involved that way.

Just for a moment, he wondered if anyone had been put in the hospital... _because of him_.

Withdrawing from his thoughts, Naruto looked immediately to what had brought him to the hospital, and more precisely, what seemed to be keeping him here.

His injuries were few.

As far as he knew, he had no broken bones. But he had also been in a coma for two weeks. Perhaps he had already been healed of the majority of the damage. There was simply no way for him to know without asking a doctor or the nurses that came to check his condition every four hours or so. But that didn't seem to be an option.

The only time he had tried to ask was met with the appearance of the same ANBU woman from twice before, telling him that the doctors and nurses were under orders to discuss nothing of what had happened. He asked if she could tell him anything. Her answer was to vanish into thin air, as if she had never been there to begin with.

He could still hear her heartbeat nearby, though. Being able to tell where she was most of the time kind of lessened the impact of the whole never-there-in-the-first-place routine.

But back to his injuries, there was only one worth noting.

He looked down at his bandaged arm, felt air ripple across the surface of his healing skin beneath it. The long, spiralling scar that swirled along his arm from his shoulder to the back of his hand looped three or four times around on its way down. It reminded him of wind in a way, the coiling nature of it as pressure built, the tendency of the gusting breeze to dance and twirl in ever tighter cycles as it went faster and faster, right before it exploded in front of him and sent blood flying everywhere.

Naruto blinked.

It did more than just remind him, apparently.

When he woke up a day later in a different room under a different guard, Naruto did not wake to the same overwhelming sensory hell as he had on the first. He was adjusted to his new, although rather intense, levels of perception.

His ears had always been excellent, far too precise to be normal in his mind. Always hearing things a few moments ahead of his classmates, being able to hear a jaw tighten almost imperceptibly at a few dozen metres, and easily picking out the details of conversations a few rooms over through relatively solid walls had left him with little doubt of his unusual range of hearing.

If there was little doubt he was gifted in the auditory sense, there was no doubt it came from Kaze. How else would he be able to detect the shifts in the air itself as sound came forth from each and every source of movement and energy in such minute detail? How else was he now able to feel the echoes of heartbeats pounding in chests, resonating through air and space and walls? And how else could he see the world without colour, stripped back to its bones forged in the darkness of his eyes with sound?

These things could only be the blessings of wind, and Kaze was the only source of such gifts.

But gifts of wind so great seemed to come at a cost.

Naruto gazed once more upon his bandaged arm.

If his blessed range of sound and perception was given to him by the breeze, his flowing scar was a reminder carved into his skin by the storm that sprung from his fingertips.

_Beware._

It was that one word that continued to echo in the strained confines of his mind, that one word that made his scar a memento of far more than a blustering accident and a broken wall. It dragged his thoughts back to the feeling of bladed air chewing and tearing at his skin, monstrous pressure shaking his eyeballs inside his skull, and the tormented howls of wind so loud and strong they pulled and tugged at his very bones.

His scar dragged him back into the storm.

The storm he had summoned, those terrible, glacial gusts he had called down from frozen heavens had shaken him so thoroughly, so very dreadfully now that he had a moment to think that was not filled to the quivering brim with fluid senses that rushed through his conscious mind with all the care of a tsunami.

That sort of power, that sort of visible, visceral, violent power was... terrifying to him.

Wind that could hurt; wind that could maim; wind that could break; wind that could kill – it was so alien to him, so painfully unfamiliar. And it opposed everything he knew about Kaze.

His memory was grounded in wind alone. As far back as it went, Kaze had been there alongside him, guiding him, helping him, caring for him in everything he did. When he had been by himself for the longest time, the wind had never left him, never betrayed him, never whispered behind his back, never glared at him strangely or harshly, never tried to separate him from others. The wind had never failed him.

In his eyes, Kaze was a force of incarnate kindness and care, a purely selfless existence that lived for all but itself.

To him, the wind was breath.

_Wind is life._

But he discovered now, just as the wind gave breath to all things, it could take it away just as easily.

To him, the wind was breath.

_Wind is death._

And now, as the wind marked his flesh with a whirling symbol of its power, he no longer knew what to think of his friend, of the blessings of wind.

Even if he was blessed by Kaze, blessed by the wind itself, the power it held was immense, too great to be measured. And if he couldn't control it with his own two hands, the scar on his left arm – the thing that reminded him so thoroughly of that truly terrifying force of nature – would only be the beginning, just one more sign of terrible things to come.

And in that moment, he realised the reason for all the wariness displayed by everyone he had come into contact with since he had first woken up in the hospital, the reason they all treated him with velvet gloves, the reason they all looked at him like he was a time bomb just waiting to detonate and take them all to hell with him.

They didn't know what could set him off. They didn't know if they could stop him if they did trigger something. They didn't know all the risks.

They were afraid of him.

In a split-second gust from nowhere, the air around him changed. Kaze moaned, long and low. The room grew colder, and the thin hospital gown he wore did little to stop his skin from breaking out in those strange tiny bumps that rose to meet the growing chill.

And he was afraid of what he could do, afraid of what it meant to tap into such overwhelming power, afraid of how many lives would end if he lost control, afraid of what those dreams he could scarcely remember meant, and...

He was afraid of himself.

He looked down once more at his arm. The swirling scar embedded in his flesh below the bandages was a herald of things – massive, unknowable, terrible things – to come. But it was not the only one.

The other herald lay on different skin in a different pattern across the hospital, a scar carved with different tools that rested near the one heartbeat within three hundred metres he found difficult to read.

He wondered if Sasuke was just as scared of what was to come as he was.

* * *

The scar itched, but not in the usual way.

"Uchiha-san."

It wasn't something that could be scratched.

"Uchiha-san."

He had tried. He had clawed at it until it began to bleed, but it simply would not leave him be.

"Uchiha-san."

The irritancy ran deeper than skin would allow, below flesh and muscle. He could feel it sitting on his bones, the vines and veins of lightning coursing down his right shoulder, down his arm and ending just beyond his elbow. And it was annoying him beyond all –

"Uchiha-san!"

Sasuke looked up, perturbed. The nurse looked down, annoyed.

He blinked at her once, then twice. "Yes?"

"I need to change your bandages," she said, a roll of such or two in her hands. "Sit up fully, please."

He complied without another word, and so began the process of removing what held bits of him together and replacing it with fresh stuff to keep holding him together. Perhaps it was a tad exaggerated, but the bandages wound around his abdomen, his right shoulder and his forehead seemed tight enough to warrant it.

She went about it swiftly, her smooth and efficient motions carried by the learned grace of a professional, though it was only possible if he sat completely still. Unnecessary fidgeting impeded her movements and stopped him from getting back to rest for longer. He had learned that quickly.

But he had not learnt her name.

A scarce few moments later, when she was done fastening his dressings and began to step back and away, he looked up at her again. Her thin eyebrows furrowed ever so slightly, barely a crease in the road of light skin bridging a narrowed pair of hazel eyes. "What is it?"

He opened his mouth halfway. "W–"

A jolt of static shot up his right arm.

"Nothing," he said, shaking his head.

And then it was her turn to shake her head. "Then I'll be back in two hours with lunch. I hope you don't mind ramen."

With a swish of neatly tied brown hair, she was out the door, white uniform and all.

Sasuke settled himself back into the bed and stared at the ceiling of the white-and-wood hospital room, up at something typical of Konoha and something more sterile in nature.

He didn't mind bandages. He didn't mind nurses. He didn't mind ramen. He was beginning to mind the endless sitting, the endless annoyance that was his scar, and the endless interruptions of his questions. But electricity fizzled in his ears for just an instant, and that was all it took for Raikou to remind him that there was something he no longer needed.

Sasuke closed his eyes and sighed.

He no longer needed _flesh_.

Sooner or later, he would be discharged from the hospital. He would leave carrying only what he arrived with. He would leave carrying only what he needed. He did not need _flesh_.

Flesh wasn't skin or tissue or muscle in this case. It was names.

Names were worn like flesh, like skin and tissue and muscle, like clothing and identity. And they were things used in repetition, again and again for communication. He made no plans to communicate frequently, so flesh was slowly losing its meaning.

He did not need her name. He did not need her identity, her face, her skin, her clothing or her appearance. He did not need her flesh.

So Raikou reminded him of that when he began to peer just a little too closely, reminded him that there was no need to bridge the gap because he asked Raikou to do so. He asked Raikou to keep him one step removed, that last vital step beyond their reach.

And Raikou had promised.

_Flesh and blood have betrayed you. Lightning will not._

He asked Raikou to keep them away so he didn't hurt them, and they didn't hurt him. It was just easier that way.

Beneath his bandages, the deep-seated irritation festering in the vines and the veins of his strange scar returned. He could not help another sigh. He asked Raikou if the feeling would leave him, if the endless aggravation would end. Raikou merely crackled of patience, sizzling quietly on the importance of fortitude.

_Wait for the strike._

As it always was, Raikou did not speak in words. He heard the electricity arc and sputter above and below his skin, and he drew what he could from them. He could hear and understand much of what Raikou said with pure sound, but some still escaped him as static in his ears.

What he did hear could be considered... strange, at least in the eyes and ears of humans. Words translated from lightning itself came as a mix of literality and abstraction. Perhaps there was something lost in that translation, a particular quality or facet of lightning unable to truly manifest in verbal language that made what he understood quite clearly confusing to them.

For him, _waiting for the strike_ meant simply to wait. Time would pass, lightning would strike, and clarity would be thrust upon him.

For them, there were far too many unknowns, far too many incalculable elements and ambiguities for them to make any real sense of it. They could reach the same conclusion as him, but only after so many potential pitfalls and misinterpretations of what he found to be a truly straightforward message.

He just wasn't quite sure how he knew that...

_They wouldn't understand_.

Sasuke stared at the floor.

That thought... _no_. That whole series of thoughts hadn't come from him. It came from...

A part of him wanted to say Raikou, but another part of him knew that to be an inaccuracy. It wasn't wrong, but it wasn't precise. What the other part of him wanted to say was... _scrolls_.

He remembered parts of that age-long dream, but he only remembered _parts_. They were just slivers of parchment, bits of inked paper torn from the whole and cobbled together to make an image that still didn't quite make sense. The living portrayals painted in ink he had seen and the strange words he heard in the darkness of that abyss were hazy blurs to him, but there was one thing that managed to stand well clear of the black mist: _cycles_.

Along with that one word came something else: _Two of two, but a third of one._

There was little he could make sense of. But Raikou seemed apprehensive to answer him when he asked his questions.

No suggestion to _wait_ came tumbling out of clear blue skies. No voltaic whispers in the depths of his head urged him to be patient. No crawling of electricity across his skin told him to act.

He found little comfort in the static of silence, because silence brought remembrance. And as he remembered what had brought him to a white bed in a white room, Sasuke's scar prickled once more, but not with irritation.

Strange sensations made their way up and down his arm, tugging and pulling at his skin and muscle and bone in a way that was more familiar than he would ever be comfortable with. His whole body tensed as he waited the feeling out, waited for the ghosts to disappear.

They did, but they left something behind. He couldn't wrap his head around what he suddenly felt for a long moment until it hit him in the gut all at once, forcing every last scrap of air from his lungs as guilt latched onto his insides and _pulled_.

He remembered. He remembered every last detail.

How the chakra he tried to summon up had acted strangely, and the moment he tried to stop the flow was the same moment he lost any semblance of control. How embers of blue and white and bronze and every colour lightning could ever appear to be floated in the air around him like phantom fireflies. How lightning struck out of nowhere and everywhere, and how Naruto had screamed a single word to the firmament that sent wind roaring down above to stop it in its tracks.

He remembered how those two forces of nature had waged absolute war upon each other, a storm in the centre of unneeded screams all because he had lost his hold on his own power. And he had put so many lives at risk as the lightning feasted on his chakra, ripping it from him in the form of pure energy to hurl and pierce the wind like jagged spears as it fought to contain what could not be contained by anything less than a hurricane.

Sasuke closed his eyes.

He had no one to blame but himself.

Despite his pact with Raikou to keep himself and others safe, he had put so many lives at risk, put so many in so much danger because he had simply lost control.

_Foolish little brother._

His eyes snapped open, his nostrils flared and his skin crackled with unseeable sparks. But he kept breathing, and ever so slowly, the fury and the anger burning in his chest faded from inferno to flame. It was there, slowly eating away at him with tongues and tendrils of fire, but the lightning would keep it at bay.

Itachi's pitiful blaze held no more than a candle to the heat of a lightning bolt, to the surge of power that brought life to the world in a single searing jolt. Sasuke would not be consumed by fire as long as Raikou lived and breathed alongside him.

But he didn't know if the same was true for the people around him.

It was far easier this time, but if he focused, with or without his eyes open, he could see electricity. Ever changing streams of blue, white and violet, it ran through the walls and the ceiling along copper wires that transferred it across the entire building, from room to room and light to light. The faintest glow of machines from rooms not his own told him where some of it went. But he could see the electricity – _the lightning_ – of people with far greater ease. It was in theirs he saw beauty, far more so than the utilitarian employ electricity found in buildings and homes and streets.

If the electricity that followed wires hidden behind and beneath concrete, wood and plaster was simply a stream, the lightning he saw in a human was a _network_. It was a complicated biological _system_ filled up by white and blue and purple and bronze and orange and red. The colours changed radically from person to person for a reason he had yet to discover, but it mattered so very little when he was able to see a part of each and every one of them. He could see each system and network of nerves and lightning spark and crackle and glow bright enough to rival the sun as they worked and functioned and lived.

And he could see those networks link at times, when a new colour burst into existence even for the briefest of moments.

Lightning, despite the destruction it wrought when it bridged the gap between heaven and earth, could create something truly breathtaking. He never wanted that magnificent reality to be extinguished.

He imagined he would've been told by someone if anyone had been... killed. He didn't feel as though any had died. Raikou would have told him, after all.

_But what if Itachi... returned?_

It was a deadly, questioning thought that suddenly filled him with icy dread, enough to dispel Raikou's sparking attempts to relieve him of cold, gripping fear. And it was a question full of fire.

The fire inside him, the one that kept on burning deep in his chest, grew once more. But not for him. If he closed his eyes and looked for the fire, it no longer sought to burn him. It sought to burn _them_. The people he put at risk by losing control, the people he didn't know that he passed on the street – all of a sudden they were burning.

Konoha burnt with them.

The bone-deep itch in his scar turned to an almost audible electrical _hiss_. Steam rose from bandages as they shifted and crackled and buckled loosely under the heat.

He was afraid. But he wasn't, because his fear could turn to anger. They were both weapons; fear was poison and anger was fire. He had no use for poison, nor did he want a use for fire. But fire was simply lightning's little brother, heat that had yet to take to the air and set the sky ablaze.

Rage wanted to grow and spread like flame. Fury hungered to consume all it touched. Anger yearned to take a torch to the world.

A bolt of lightning struck it into oblivion, and then there was nothing left but embers.

He was silently, smoulderingly angry now, that one emotion left dead and blackened like the smoking ruins of a forest exposed to wildfire, barren and skeletal. It would grow again, however. There would be something to burn once more.

And he couldn't let that happen. He couldn't let them burn, let the lightning that granted them life be swallowed up in flame. It was all too beautiful to let it vanish in fire.

The coiling wisps of steam dissipated quickly, and the bandages remained warm and unsettled, a comforting charge of static nestling awkwardly between material and skin. The cold hands tightly wrapped around his heart loosened their grip ever so slightly, and Raikou thundered silently in his chest and thrust them into nonexistence.

It would be a challenge. It always was. In spite of his fear, his apprehension, his terror at what everything could suddenly mean and at the same time not, he was going to control it.

Anger would slow his stride; fear would make the path uncertain. The shadows would grow long; lightning in its greatest form would fall from his hands.

But he was going to succeed. He was determined to. For his family, for the people he put at risk, for himself, and for Raikou.

Sasuke could not deny that he was terrified of what the future held. The thought of it made his insides quiver and the lightning that rode the pathways of his nervous system sizzle and spark uncomfortably. At least he knew what the trail ahead looked like.

Though the trail was so truly wreathed in flame, lightning would be by his side as he walked down that burning road.

He wondered if the wind would join them there, just as it had joined lightning countless times before.

* * *

The sound of his door closing roused Naruto from his state of half-wake, opening half-lidded eyes to a window full of orange afternoon and a stranger that half-blocked his view. When exactly had he dozed off? Somewhere between the fourth and fifth visit to the bathroom sitting in a pot under his bed, perhaps?

He yawned as he rubbed a balled hand into the corner of his left eye, pulling remnants of kind-of-sleep from his lids. "What time is it?"

"Quarter past four or so," a man's voice said, right before he heard the click of fingers and the sound and smell of something papery igniting. That was before the unpleasant stench of burning tobacco made its way to his nose, however.

"Are you really going to smoke in here?" Naruto asked, his face scrunched at the smell.

The man offered him little more than a half-hearted stare. "Yep."

Naruto blinked a few times. The man took a long drag of his cigarette.

Whoever he was, he wasn't particularly gifted in the art of first impressions. Or maybe it had just been an objectionable day for the man all around. He could hardly tell just by looking at him.

He was quite tall, quite bearded, and quite bored-looking. The rolled-up sleeves of his standard navy-blue shirt gave Naruto an impression of a bored man, as did the standard forest-green flak jacket, the standard navy-blue pants, the standard navy-blue sandals, the not-so-standard navy-blue wristbands, the definitely not-standard sash around his waist marked with the kanji for 'fire', and the standard Konoha hitai-ate holding back spiky... black... hair...

_Ah. He's a shinobi._

"Took you long enough, kid," he said with a half-grin, brown eyes finally showing even the slightest glint of something other than _bored_.

He supposed the realisation must've been obvious on his face if the guy said that.

"You're a jounin, I take it?" he asked, tilting his head back just a little.

The man downed another mouthful of smoke and let it all loose in a formless cloud just a moment later. "Yep."

Naruto waited a few moments in an odd state that resembled silence but didn't quite seem that way to him. It was more like the man was just delaying as long as he could as Naruto waited for him to say something more. But he didn't. He just stood there, not a care in the world, smoking his cigarette.

Naruto just blinked a few more times. All of a sudden, he almost found himself looking at an adult version of Shikamaru, but without the unusual pineapple ponytail or the catchphrase. Yet again, Shikamaru did have a father he met one time he could barely remember, and he could still recall that the man had acted exactly like his son. So this guy was just adult Shikamaru, but with a beard and an unhealthy habit?

_Speaking of which... _"You do know that's going to kill you eventually, right?"

It seemed to be the jounin's turn to blink a few times, right before he chuckled once and grinned like mad.

"Kid, I can tell you right now that the last thing I have to worry about killing me in this life is cigarettes," he said with a broad grin, still inhaling smoke by the lungful.

And he could've sworn that wasn't the same cigarette that had been in the man's hand a minute or so ago. Did this guy always smoke like a chimney?

The man exhaled another rancid, shapeless puff of smoke before he attempted to clear his throat. "Anyway, the name's Sarutobi Asuma."

_Sarutobi... why does that name sound – Oh._

Naruto cocked his head to one side. "You're related to the old man?"

"You call my old man 'old man'?" Asuma chuckled. "He doesn't even let me get away with that. Our dear Hokage must have quite the soft spot for you, kid."

And just like that, Asuma brought up something that had been bothering Naruto for the past few days.

"Speaking of the old man," Naruto began, shifting his gaze around the room a few times, "do you know why he hasn't come down here to see me? I asked one of the guards, but they aren't allowed to tell me anything, apparently."

Asuma took another drag of his cigarette. "It's been a busy few weeks around here. The Hokage doesn't have a whole lot of time to spare."

"What's been going on?" Naruto asked.

Asuma's small half-smile faded, and the man suddenly looked every bit the grizzled shinobi a jounin was always made out to be. "A lot of things, kid. And a fair few of those are what bring me here today."

He expected questions to come next, the final stretch of a search for answers to what had happened that brought this jounin to him. He didn't expect the man to walk his way ever so casually to the door and motion for him to follow.

There wasn't a smile or a grin or even much of anything on his face when he spoke. It was just a flat expression, almost grim in the way brown eyes were suddenly on him so intensely. "There's something you need to see first."

Naruto blinked once, twice, and then three times before it really registered in his conscious mind. He nodded and shuffled himself out of the sheets and over to the left side of the bed.

His first step away from his bed was gingerly performed, more cautious than he'd ever really had a need to be. He slowly piled on the weight his foot could hold until he was sure it would take it. Before long, the other was by its side, firmly planted on the ground in both mind and reality.

He looked down at his feet against the rather cold floor. He hadn't walked properly for a while.

When he'd asked the doctor – the only time he ever received a real response –, the explanation was complex at first, until Naruto managed to boil it down to two key words: "muscle atrophy".

He knew very well what muscles were, but he had never heard of atrophy before. A little more thinking, and he realised it was a term for loss of some kind. In his case, muscle atrophy was muscle lost from disuse.

The way it had been explained, it sounded like it was extremely common when people hadn't used any of theirs in some time. Two weeks asleep, and he was meant to be weak, struggling to move, to stand and to walk. He found it somewhat humorous that the doctor had been surprised he was perfectly capable of moving around unassisted upon waking.

His mind quickly turned away from his body and to that of the man in the middle of opening the door. Asuma was steadfast, quietly resolute in his silent movements.

Naruto followed with a little bit more noise under his tread.

In the hallway outside, new air met him quickly, but it was only a split-second before he caught proper sight of the cloaked and masked guards outside and the almost imperceptible nod the one to his left – a woman with a cat mask – gave Asuma. He heard it far more than he saw it.

And it was the same way he heard it more than he saw it when he began walking alongside Asuma down the sterile hall and past hospital staff – the '_it'_ being the whispering.

He ignored it for the most part, almost identical to the manner with which he ignored the nervous darting of eyes or the vague pointing of fingers in his direction that came from those nurses and doctors. But there were bits and pieces he couldn't help but pick up.

_"One of them two... such a freak storm... they're calling it an accident... this is all bizarre... the only survivors... I don't get the need for secrecy... can't remember how many casualties... what's with the ANBU security presence?"_

His mind began to churn, and his eyes moved away from Asuma and down to the floor on which he walked.

There was a deeper implication in all of those words, something more than what was being said so obviously about Sasuke and him in hushed, fearful tones. It was something they all considered abnormal, something far out of the ordinary that involved survivors, casualties, secrecy and an ANBU presence. The answer was clearly what had brought them to the hospital in the first place, but it didn't explain anything about the secrecy or the ANBU guards or the casualties or the fact that he still hadn't really been told anything at all.

And then there was Asuma arriving unannounced, the only visitor he'd been admitted the entire time he had been confined to his bed. Suddenly, Naruto was free to follow Asuma beyond the threshold of his room, to walk the halls with his own two feet. But his question still hadn't been answered: what did Asuma want?

He was left to rattle those thoughts around in his mind for a few just a few seconds.

Asuma looked down at him just slightly, inquisitive eyes darting to lower left corners to watch him walk. "You're not like other kids your age, are you?"

Naruto lifted his head from thought, meeting his gaze for a few brief seconds before he looked away. "Maybe. Why?"

"No real reason," Asuma said, hands by his sides slipping partially into his pockets, thumbs hooking in while the rest of his fingers dangled. "I just expected a kid around your age to make a bit more noise."

"Is quiet weird from someone my age?" Naruto asked.

Asuma shrugged. "It's unusual, I suppose. Kids your age are loud. They shout, they run, and they play. You don't see many take the time to learn quiet early on."

Naruto looked back up at him. "Were you one of the quiet ones?"

After a few seconds' silence, Naruto noticed the faraway look in Asuma's eyes.

"There wasn't much choice in the matter when I was your age," he said quietly.

Naruto didn't ask why, simply returning to his thoughts and his questions.

They walked down the remainder of that hallway in silence, passing nurses and doctors and visitors, some sparing glances in their direction though others did not. Wind trailed in his footsteps all the while, making the loose hospital gown flicker and shift, just as it did to the clothing of others equal to his in slack.

The wind whistled and whirled in invisible currents behind him, a floating feeling he had forgotten until he had once more found his feet. But it wasn't the same, not as freeing as it had been in days that seemed to have passed him by as he slumbered all too restlessly, the world still turning while he slept in a place of ink he couldn't quite remember.

The scar on his arm itched, the sensation faint beneath bandages. Bittersweet feelings and a sense of almost-melancholy blossomed deep within, but with none of the beauty of a flower in spring. The colour of an old bruise, it bloomed pathetically, pitifully in its faltering petals that fell and faded beneath the breeze.

It was the same breeze he had once pitied people for being unable to hear. And they were still unable to hear the wind as it swept them by in unnoticed currents, carrying those bittersweet, melancholy remnants of flowers that disappeared into the firmament.

Why did he feel like he was coming undone step by step down that hallway?

The question went unanswered as Asuma turned and reached for a doorway.

* * *

Asuma gestured to the grand view before them. "Take a look."

As they stood atop the hospital's water tower, Naruto surveyed the expanse of Konoha around him cast in the gradually departing light of an amber afternoon. He didn't notice anything strange at first, right until the moment he saw a gap in the typical pattern of tall trees and similarly tall buildings: a literal gap.

Far to the northwest, far enough away to make him squint to see it, he could see... scaffolding. It was the kind he had seen after the storm that brought Raikou into the world. It was impromptu, makeshift and meant to be taken down quickly. But the building it surrounded was torn open and exposed to the air.

The roof was missing in entirety, the walls were leaning out and in, and he could see bits of wooden flooring barely hanging on to what was left of the structure's second story. Scaffolding and hastily built supports barely kept it all together. The damage was thanks to deep, black marks that began at the building's western wall and engulfed it all from there. He was reminded of fire, but fire burnt buildings to the ground in a cloud of ash and embers. It didn't smash them into pieces.

It wasn't fire that had done this.

If there had been an accident of some kind, he would understand it somewhat. But an accident couldn't explain why he saw the same kind of thing again in the building next to it, and the same thing in every building in the next few blocks down from that. An accident couldn't explain why the streets further west and north seemed to have fewer and fewer standing structures, fewer and fewer signs of civilisation the further his eyes dared to travel as he worked his way towards the horizon on a path paved with nothing but remnants of clearing rubble. An accident couldn't explain why it suddenly reminded him of the storm that brought Raikou, the hospital room he destroyed without meaning to, and the day when he and Sasuke had... _lost control._

His hand went to his mouth, and he found himself without breath in his lungs. That burning sensation of breathlessness he hated with every fibre of his being filled his chest, his arms, his legs and his skull to something like a breaking point. There were tears, too.

And he didn't even know why there were tears running down his face in absolute silence. He didn't even know what he started saying. It was something that came as quiet mumbles, barely audible even to himself through the shudders of his chest as he struggled for air.

But he heard a word that passed his own lips: _"Betrayal."_

The tears faded quickly, and breath came back to him. But the wind returned to him so very slowly. Kaze came to him on the breeze so very... _saddened_. The wind became a mournful whistle.

He looked out onto the view again.

Buildings and structures began to fall as he looked further into the distance, right until it became nothing more than a small sea of rubble and ruin interrupted by the occasional tree still upright and rooted. But beyond that, he could see where all the destruction first began: a blackened, perfectly circular crater he couldn't see the bottom of a city block or two wide.

If his memory could be trusted, it was what had once been the Academy training ground. It was gone now, simply _erased._

Repairs had begun, and they were still in progress. He could hear the sounds of workmen and machinery among the fallen buildings, even if he couldn't see them. The rubble was being cleared. The houses and homes and buildings and businesses were being put back the way they were, day by day and hour by hour.

But he could still see what had happened so very clearly.

A large chunk of northwest Konoha had been wiped off the map, beginning in a charred crater and working its way out in deadly spirals. He could see how brutal wind had shredded wood and concrete like wet paper, how frenzied bolts of lightning had felled buildings in singular strikes, and how the storm the two created as they fought against one another grew and grew from a single point until the entire stretch of earth was swallowed in the jaws of a hurricane.

That was what happened when life-giving wind turned into the wrathful howls of death.

That was what happened when a desire to protect turned into a need to contain that turned into a need to triumph.

That was happened when wind and lightning fought.

That was what happened when he _lost control_.

The fear of those he saw in the hospital made sense; the trepidation he was treated with made sense; the gripping, unconscious terror of his own bond with wind made sense. Every last piece of that terrible puzzle finally clicked into place.

Naruto closed his weeping eyes so tight it began to hurt. But he couldn't look at anything now. It would hurt too much to see another's face look at him when he had a question like this to ask.

"How many?"

Asuma stayed silent for a few moments. And they were long, _painful_ moments. The waiting hurt and hurt and _hurt_. And it would've kept hurting more and more if he remained in that deadly state of unknowing limbo for just a few seconds longer.

Asuma exhaled sharply just before he ended the pain. "Fifteen."

But the answer hurt far more than the waiting ever could.


	9. 8

_From the Forge_

_Scroll 112; Memory N292_

_Category: Mental Architecture_

_We have clarity. I know that much._

_It is not always present, of course. In many ways, we are still living things, after all. We are capable of emotion. We are capable of pain. We can be born with these things, and we can learn these things. But we can unlearn them, too._

_My preference has always been to remain, in some small way, as I was before. I maintain my physical form, and retain my ways of thinking. These are mine. But I know I could be other things. I could learn other things, become other things, things I have been before or may become in this future or the next._

_I could reject emotion. That is a choice. I could reject pain. That is a choice._

_But it is also a choice to remain as I was, as I will be, as I hope to be again. So, I choose to feel emotion. I choose sadness, and hurt, and misery, and sorrow, and anguish, and grief. I choose joy, and peace, and laughter, and pleasure, and hope, and pride, and awe, and serenity. I choose pain._

_In some small way, I choose to remain human._

* * *

What was he supposed to think? What could he possibly think when this man – a man he remembered mentioned by his father as some kind of thief, a unsightly blemish and an affront to the clan's pride – came to him, walked him from his hospital room in the glow of sunset and into several square kilometres of rubble, dust and the echoes of Konoha's recovery and told him something like this?

Sasuke didn't know what to think, but he knew what he began to feel.

There was a pang in his chest, a burst of painful reminiscence as he recalled his father in more detail than he cared for, but that solitary spasm was swallowed up in dark waters as an ocean of guilt was poured out before him. And there was more than enough liquid remorse, thick and viscous, to drown the flames so intensely stoked by betrayal and hate and death sputtering away in his belly. There was more than enough sea to mute the cracks of thunder and dim the flashes of light he saw and heard in his head.

It _hurt_.

It wasn't the sense of sheer helplessness that had engulfed him when everything was stripped away from him like... _before_. It wasn't the same kind of absolute vulnerability, the eventual phantom pain of reaching out to someone that had been there so recently but finding them no longer with him, like his family and his clan was a limb lost to his body.

It was the weight and the length and the breadth of it all. It was the impossible dimensions and proportions of all the sudden _responsibility_ thrust upon him that wrenched the hardest at what was left of his heart, because now there were more people like him.

Sasuke just stood there, not uttering a single word, and watched the dust in the afternoon air shift and waver as the sound of machinery, workmen and footsteps echoed through that desolate scene of heaped rubble and scarred ground. He stood there and watched, until it all sank into him at once.

It did not come as terror. There were no screams shattering the silence of the dark, nor was there blood dripping from the sky in muddied crimson waves to consume the world and all he knew. It was not overwhelming fear that took him by the neck and gripped him with deathly cold hands. Instead, it was the guilt of _responsibility_ that sank into his gut like an arm-long knife, where frozen, unfeeling metal was thrust into the home of drowning flame. It choked him, robbed him of words when those frostbitten fingers squeezed into his throat.

And it lasted for what felt like an eternity, because the cold, cold fear of that night bled down from the auburn sky above. He could see and hear and feel the glacial rain of that stormy darkness again as it seeped into the firmament and it bore down upon him in freezing totality. The frigid rains engulfed him once more. They fell like needles of ice only to splinter open on his back and tear his skin asunder, making blood fall faster than the bitter deluge itself. He bled and bled until the sky turned blacker than even the night itself and the swamped grass under his shaking legs turned bloody red and abyssal black.

_Just like Itachi's eyes._

A flash of light broke the return of those twisted eyes into a thousand pieces, and his fear collapsed upon itself in a glittering shower of shattered glass. Raikou thundered in his ears and he knew peace once more as the world around morphed back into the one he knew.

But his chest still hurt, still ached with a pain that throbbed and pulsed with every tired beat of his heart. The ocean of guilt clung to him, adherent and heavy on his skin and under it. It refused to let go, and it stuck to his hands like... _blood_.

There was no point denying it now: there was blood – _innocent blood_ – on his hands. His mistake, his lapse in control, had cost lives and ruined others, and he didn't even have the decency to die alongside those his mistake had killed.

His eyes welled with tears trying so hard to fall, but they vanished in hazy wisps of steam the moment they touched his cheeks. Electrostatic sensation crawling across his skin, he had forgotten he could no longer cry the way he used to. Maybe it was better that way, but it robbed him of the faint relief tears brought and replaced it with hot trails of rising vapour.

Fifteen people were dead. He didn't know who they were. He only knew them as numbers. He only knew them as _seven men, six women, and one child_.

Fifteen people he didn't know were dead because of a mistake, an accident more than catastrophic in scope. But what had their lives amounted to beyond the numbers he knew? _What were they worth?_

Beneath the shudders of his chest and the shaking of his voice and the innocent blood soaking his hands, he gathered the strength he needed to utter a question.

"Why did you show me this?"

A hand was placed on his right shoulder, and he felt a spark shudder through the scarred flesh of his right arm. The steam stopped rising from his face as Raikou began to blaze like the sun within him.

"So you can see why you need control. Because this is what happens when you lose it."

He turned to face the man behind him, his face reddened and strained with failed tears.

Silver hair that seemed to defy gravity, a hitai-ate tilted over the right eye, a mask over his lower face, and one grey orb exposed to the open air – even garbed in the typical uniform of a jounin, Hatake Kakashi was an unusual looking man.

But there was a strange kind of grim sympathy in the only dark eye that Sasuke could see, a tired understanding of everything it took in at that one moment. In that same moment, Sasuke knew that this man had seen _much_.

Kakashi crouched, lowering himself to Sasuke's height. The grip on his shoulder was reaffirmed with a gentle squeeze.

"I won't force anything on you," he said, "but I can help you. I can teach you to control your power, and you can make sure that this never happens again."

The hand on his shoulder squeezed once more. "You can make sure their lives were worth something."

_Worth. _Sasuke heard that word aloud yet whispered in his ear, an atmospheric crackle of Raikou that was small in sound but massive in mind. His gaze fell to the dusty ground as electric gears began to turn.

There... would be no more blood spilled needlessly. There would be no more landscapes of ruin in the village his clan had protected for generations. There would be no more death in his home.

There would be control. There would be clarity. There would be a way to make sure their lives meant something. There would be certainty that fifteen people hadn't perished without reason.

He could save them, even in death, from the fate of... _his clan_.

With no need to look around at the devastation that suddenly weighed on his heart so much less, and with an assuredness of mind that only Raikou had ever granted him, he raised his eyes once more and fixed both upon the lone window to the soul of Hatake Kakashi.

He gave his answer.

* * *

Unbeknownst to Sasuke, beneath the bandages of his right arm, the jagged scar like veins and vines glowed with blue-white light for the briefest of instants.

* * *

_Asuma sighed. "It sucks shit, kid, and it's a hell of a lot to take in, especially at your age. But, even still, there's a way forward from here."_

_Naruto looked up at him with tired, tearful eyes. "... Control, right?"_

_"If you can control it, this'll never happen again," Asuma said. "No one else will die."_

_Naruto said nothing._

_Asuma gazed down at him. "From where I stand, you've got two options: you can stay like you are now, miserable and self-doubting. Or you can do something about it, and turn this whole tragedy into something worthwhile."_

_The jounin, arms crossed over his chest, outline lit by the bronze of dusk, turned to the horizon._

_"You can make it _mean_ something, kid. And that's all that matters."_

Naruto stood in the middle of a quiet street, just... looking.

In front of him was the high arch of an entrance, a wide path of robust stone that weaved towards houses on the north and east sides, storehouses on the south, and dog kennels and the veterinary clinic to the west. There were trees, there was grass, there were flowers and there were gardens, all within the confines of four walls.

He'd been here many times before.

The Inuzuka clan compound didn't have any guards, nor did it have any gates. They had locks on their homes and their cupboards and their kennels, but that was just common sense. Nothing about where or how they lived was made to separate them from the rest of Konoha. Nothing about them was designed to put them above all others.

Naruto shook his head with an almost wistful sigh. He wouldn't put it past them to only have a clan compound for the sense of community alone.

He stood at the entrance in the fading light for a while, hands in his pockets as the cool night breeze began to roll in from the far south. He stood there for a while, considering whether to bother his friend with his unannounced presence or not.

A gentle gust made the trees lining the street behind wave and shiver.

"I know they'll let me in," he whispered to his friend. "I just don't want to burden anyone with this."

The gust grew stronger, and the shivers of the leaves turned to shakes of the branches.

Naruto sighed. "I'm contradicting myself by coming here, I know. I... I just don't know where else to go."

The breeze faded in part, and the trees stopped making so much noise. Instead, invisible hands tapped him on the shoulder just once, and he was urged forward a single step.

Fresh air pooling at his feet, bringing back that old feeling of endless reassurance, Kaze told him to go.

He breathed in once, and his mind came alive with happy memories. There was food; there was laughter; there was the barking of canines that echoed across the compound; there was the smell of wet dog that filled the air so horribly from the kennels for a week after washing day, and then there was that one family among the mix of traditional and modern homes with a house no bigger and no prouder than any other.

And that was where Kiba, Hana and Tsume could all be found.

Naruto began to walk. He walked down a wide path he'd walked many times before. He walked past houses, storehouses, the kennels, the clinic, grass and trees and flowers and gardens he'd walked past many times before. He walked within the confines of four walls he'd walked within many times before. Then he finally arrived at a doorstep he'd arrived at many times before. But his heart had never felt so heavy in any of the times before this.

The doorstep was wood, light and worn. The door was wood, dark and weathered. He stepped on the first and listened to it creak ever so slightly under his weight, tiniest strands and trails of dirt and dust falling from its sides and through the unseeable gaps in the wooden plank itself. He raised a loose fist to the surface of the second and he prepared to knock.

His fist leant back and came forward, but it hit nothing. He stopped short, scarce few centimetres from the wood. The only sound that came was from the shifting joint in his wrist and arm, and the insignificant gust of minute wind that railed as much as it could against the wood but broke apart as easily as waves on sandy shores.

Doubt came rushing through his mind, a high tide that rolled in at dusk but refused to leave until dawn. But the moon hung high, still and unmoving as the air above. The faint presence of Kaze whirling around him did nothing to dispel the mist, nothing to wipe away the miasma of hesitation that clung to him so closely.

It clung to him like... _death_.

He felt that murmuring chill make headway up his spine and his skin as faded wind kicked up around him, coiling tighter and tighter against the surface of him with awful whispers of alien, unknowable sound. The dreadful pressure that could choke the air from his lungs and force all thought from his brain returned. And it returned like night did as day fell away, as the sun plummeted below the horizon and the pale moon shone pale light down on everything in the dark, where the ashen glow revealed nothing but more shadow. Death ruled that world bathed in pale, bitter moonlight, carried on the wind both foul and cold. And he couldn't understand it, or why it even existed in the first place.

The night sky of his world was gray and blue and black, mired in clouds and rain and clear sky, but above all, _wind_. It was full of wind he understood to the fullest. He knew how it brought life to everything above the oceans, everything that walked and crawled on the earth, and everything that flew through the ever-changing skies in which the wind held truly righteous domain. He knew the world where life-giving wind ruled.

He didn't know the world he saw in his head as he was about to knock on the door of his best human friend, his sister and his mother, about to bring his doubts and confusions down on them. It was a world of cold skies and shadowy grounds, where wind carried the echoes of voices lost to time and decay, their words dry and shrivelled in the freezing air, their final breaths carved into the mournful whisper of the arctic breeze. It was full to the brim of empty, lifeless wind that spoke of nothing but death. He couldn't understand it.

He didn't _want_ to understand it.

Warm wind embraced him, and Kaze's invisible hands descended on him as they had not for a time. Somehow, there was still reassurance in that nuzzling, nurturing breeze that took away the cold as it had so many times before. Words were spoken in his ear, and Naruto looked up at the grain of the wood of the door, his loose tangle of fingers that was his fist still hovering mere centimetres from it.

Maybe they could help him.

He looked down at himself once more, green shirt, grey shorts, blue sandals and all. He was glad he had returned to his apartment, showered and dressed himself properly before he took to wandering aimlessly. It was certainly better than walking around in a hospital gown.

He gulped down one last breath, tapped his knuckle three times against the wood, and waited as the sound rang out into the space of the home. He closed his eyes, imagined the dimensions, and felt a familiar shape suddenly move for the entranceway.

"I'll get... Naruto?"

He opened his eyes, the door was open, and Hana was there, complete with slack jaw and wide eyes. Naruto felt a smile coming on. "And that's fifty-eight, Hana."

Hana shook her head once, grabbed him by the shoulder and hauled him into the entryway, right before she turned away and walked swiftly up the little hallway into the first room. "Okaa-chan, guess who's here!"

A loud, raucous laugh and a shout followed Hana's call. "I'd know that scent anywhere!"

His sandals were barely off his feet and on the floor when he heard Tsume come thundering down the floorboards.

"Come here, kid!" a woman with wild brown hair half-roared, smashing into one side of him while she slammed an arm down on the other, knocking him halfway over but keeping him steadily unsteady as she buried his face into her shoulder.

"Nice to see you, too, Tsume," he mumbled, the mouthful of shirt making it difficult to talk as she repeatedly slapped him on the back.

It was only a few seconds of close-quarters restraint before she shoved him away, nearly into the wall with a sharp-toothed grin. He was lucky Hana stopped him from crashing into the wall and making a head-sized hole in the plaster. He guessed she didn't want a repeat of when Kiba first showed up on their doorstep with him in tow. He was still sore from that one.

"Be careful, Okaa-chan," Hana half-scolded, taking her hands off his shoulders and finally giving him a chance to find his feet once more. "You don't want to have to pay for another wall, do you?"

Tsume gave a playful snort. "Oh, Hana, like you didn't do the same thing to Kiba once a month when you were younger."

Naruto couldn't help a grin. He watched a similar scene nearly every time he showed up.

Hana sighed. "Just be careful with him. Shrimp here just got out of the hospital, after all."

"Sorry about that," Tsume said with a sheepish grin he'd seen Kiba wear often. "Haven't had many guests for the last little while."

Naruto just smiled up at the woman with the long, wild brown hair and the same facial markings as Kiba and Hana and the rest of the clan. "No problem."

There was barely a moment of rest before the two Inuzuka women were dragging him into the first room, the one with a large wooden table and chairs that led to the closed-off kitchen on the right and another hallway on the left, and then practically throwing him into a chair.

Even when his butt ached from the impact like it had so many times before, he could not contain a smile at the routine of it all. It was what happened every time he arrived at their doorstep, knocked three times, and waited for Hana or Kiba to drag him inside by the back of his shirt. They threw him around, knocked him from side to side, kept him unbalanced and struggling to find solid ground in the centre of the playful storm that was the Inuzuka household.

But as Hana and Tsume pulled up their own chairs and he readied himself for the barrage of questions, a sound caught his ear: the flush of a toilet. And then, inside, he was already laughing. It took a few moments for it make its way to the surface, but he was giggling like mad and Hana and Tsume had no idea what was about to hit them.

Naruto smiled wide through his fit of barely contained laughter. This was going to be good.

"Naruto!"

Kiba came bursting out the corridor on the left side of the room with a massive grin, his friend running with all he was worth to try and tackle him off his chair and squeeze the life out of him. Kiba's best efforts failed miserably when he fell flat on his face halfway to his goal, his pants around his ankles.

Naruto kept on laughing, Hana descended into body-shaking guffaws, and Tsume look tempted to join in but instead chose to haul her son off the floor by his light brown t-shirt.

"Damn it, Kiba! Are you smoking something again?" Tsume asked with no small measure of severity in her voice. "Do I have to tie you to a chair again and give you another long lecture on the dangers of addiction? Because I'm game if you are!"

Hana stopped laughing, and Naruto winced at Tsume's fearsome tone.

Kiba shook his head fast and talked even faster. "No, no, no, I just forgot to pull up my pants because I heard talking in here and then I smelt Naruto and then I flushed the toilet and came running out here without my pants up but then I tripped and you picked me up like this."

He giggled anxiously as he gave his mother a nervous smile. "See? No drugs, I promise."

"I swear I've had a headache since the day you were born," Tsume sighed and rubbed her temples with her free hand, right before she dropped Kiba back to the floor with a thud and a grunt. "Just pull up your pants already."

Kiba scrambled to his feet, yanked up his shorts and stuffed himself into the chair next to Naruto. And then the air was filled with questions.

"Why didn't they let us into your room?" Kiba asked. "Were you contagious or something?"

"Why didn't you tell us you were getting out today?" Hana asked. "We would've dragged you down here ourselves!"

"Why don't we get dinner?" Tsume asked, eyes sweeping over the other three.

Naruto blinked. He expected the first three questions and the fourth statement. They all made sense. The last question was a little... _abrupt_.

Before he knew it, the hospital-related issues were forgotten for just a few seconds.

"Let's get ramen!" Kiba all but shouted. "We can celebrate Naruto finally getting off his lazy ass."

Hana smacked him over the back of the head once before giving him a good hair-tousling. "Good idea, but bad delivery."

Tsume grinned. "It's settled, then. Kiba, you get the ramen. Hana, you get the groceries."

"Oh, Okaa-chan," Kiba whined. "I don't want to spend ten minutes waiting in line. Why can't I run down to the store instead?"

"Because you'll ignore the list and spend all the money I give you on beef jerky and junk food," Tsume sighed. "You get the ramen."

"Fine," Kiba moaned. "What do you guys want?"

"Pork," Tsume said.

"Beef," said Hana."

"Make that two of the pork."

Kiba looked up. "Not getting miso, Naruto?"

Naruto just smiled.

It was a few seconds before Hana grabbed the shopping list from inside the kitchen, picked up the wad of cash Tsume doled out on her way out. It was a few seconds more before Kiba picked up the slightly smaller wad from his mother and ran out the door, quick as a dog in want of dinner.

But there was a moment between those, when he watched Kiba drop his left arm to the table as money spun across the wood. He clutched it casually between two fingers, just a minor diversion from his excited stride. But there was a wince of his left eye, no matter how slight, along with a sound of muscles up and down his left side tensing, and a groan so far beneath his breath he probably didn't even realise he had made a noise at all.

But Kiba was out the door before he knew it, following in his sister's recent footsteps. The only difference was the lingering injury in his friend's side, and the new strain he felt in his chest at the new guilt.

And then that feeling faded just a little as realised the Inuzuka home was suddenly quiet, absent of the usual humorous, ambient noise and playful poking and banter. It was just him and Tsume. He wondered where Kuromaru was, but he didn't feel the need to ask when he heard the old war hound scratch at his one remaining ear out the back as the Haimaru triplets wrestled with each other for fun in the cooling grass.

He could only stall for so long before he felt the need to ask the inevitable question, the reason why Tsume was suddenly so quick to deflect her children's search for answers and send them out, even if only for a handful of minutes.

"How much do you know?" he asked, turning to face the older woman and her immediate tired expression.

Tsume sighed. "Enough, but I'm sure you have a few questions of your own."

And that he did. But something else gnawed at him for a brief moment. "Did you know I was coming?"

"Yeah," she nodded. "Got word a little while ago you might be heading this way."

He wasn't... sure of where to start. There were so many places, so many fields of cold flowers blossoming with questions of the dark and the wind... _death_. The air in the warmest home he knew felt chilly all of a sudden.

But Tsume was suddenly in the seat next to him, placing a firm, calloused hand on his shoulder and holding him equally as firm, just as her other hand touched the underside of the table for a moment. Though there was cold, he did not shiver with another by his side.

"It's alright, kid," she said quietly.

He nodded. "I... I know."

"You can start small."

He did. "How... how did it happen?"

"How it happened, or how it _happened_?"

He didn't understand for a few moments, but the windmill gears in his head began to cycle through all he knew of shinobi, roiling through facts as the wind made the turbine spin faster and faster until his mental factory churned something tangible into his hands a moment later. They – the ones in charge of the village – told two stories: an official one of a freak training accident that tore its way through city block after city block, as Tsume went on to explain that the village would cling to in order to save an already wavering reputation, and the one that really happened.

The latter was what she talked of in detail. That was because she was one of the first responders.

"There was this big surge of chakra, big enough to trip the silent alarms of the village barrier. About five of us got to the training ground in time. A massive wall of wind along with a shitload of lightning was coming at the surrounding area, and the thing was growing too quickly for us to even try and contain it, so we just grabbed everyone we could and ran for it."

Naruto pictured it: a wall of wailing wind and thunderous storms, titanic and rolling ever forward with the strength of a tsunami. It threatened to consume all in its path, swallowing trees and fields, tossing homes and streets into the swirling mass of clouds that eclipsed the very sky. And then there were the few who ran from such terrifying natural force with all the speed they could muster.

Naruto bowed his head ever so slightly, because running hadn't been enough for some.

"The storm ripped up pretty much everything in its way, all in just a few minutes. We got a lot of people to safety, but..." Tsume shook her head and sighed. "Haven't seen stuff like that in a long time. Even back in the day, I never saw anything exactly like this."

Naruto looked up. "What do you mean?"

"There was a lot of chakra involved," Tsume said, leaning forward on her knees. "Any half-trained genin with less than a week of field experience could tell you that much, but this lasted a few _minutes_. In terms of ninjutsu, anything with that kind of destructive force usually plays out in a matter of seconds. And that's not even considering just how much chakra it takes to power something like that."

He was... getting an idea of the scale. He had _felt it_, stood at the very eye of the storm, but he didn't know how to measure something so _massive_ he couldn't wrap his mind around it. But when Tsume talked of time and chakra in amounts, it didn't quite make sense to him.

"How much chakra would it need?"

Tsume frowned for a moment. "It's damn hard to say for sure, but this stuff felt like... ah, well, I'd have to say this sort of thing could only be pulled off by someone like the Hokage, maybe one of the Sannin. If anyone else even tried, the amount of chakra it'd burn up would run them dry in a few seconds. Probably kill them in the process if they didn't have enough for even that."

He understood now.

Ninjutsu – techniques used by shinobi that required certain amounts of chakra to use – was something he only had a basic understanding of. But he had read about the four Hokage, and each had performed ninjutsu that only added to the almost mythic status of each. The Shodai's Mokuton was enough to create the forests of Konoha, all the way to the horizon, and the Nidaime's control of water was so great he could spawn rivers from the moisture in the air alone. The Sandaime was known for his mastery of hundreds, if not thousands, of Konoha's techniques, and the Yondaime, the Kiiroi Senko, was legendary for the space-time ninjutsu that had made him the fastest man in the world.

And here he was, told that the thing he had brought into being with a loss of control was the kind of thing that those men had once done with purpose. It was _insane_.

He knew the wind was a mighty thing, a natural force that spiralled far beyond the reaches of the mortal coil. It was an understanding so innate to him it was written in his very bones. But... now that he had something to compare it to... _what would happen if he lost control while he tried?_

An accident – a _mistake_ – had brought death and destruction. What would an _attempt_ bring?

Tsume's hand squeezed his shoulder, and his shaking form stilled.

"It's alright, kid. I've got you."

A... familial kind of warmth drove the cold away once more.

He shut his eyes tight.

"Tell me what's wrong, kid."

"I'm... afraid."

"Of what?"

His eyes open, he looked down. "... Myself."

"You can learn."

"But what if I don't?" He didn't lift his head. "What if this happens again? What if it's worse than the last time?"

"It won't happen again." Two rough, worn hands fell on his shoulders. "Because I know you, kid, and you won't let it."

She squeezed once, firm and warm and comforting as she repeated herself. "You won't let it."

Gingerly, he looked up. Earnest eyes set in a face of conviction and sincerest belief almost startled him.

Tsume gave him the typical grin of the Inuzuka. "Trust me, kid. You'll make this mean something."

There was more faith there than he'd ever seen before in his life.

Just like that, the air around him moved and instilled warmth beneath his skin. Kaze tousled his hair ever so slightly.

_Maybe... maybe I can do this._

With his burden lessened, with his heart a mote lighter, and with warmth that forced the cold back humming in his chest, the night went on.

* * *

She remembered the late afternoon he had first appeared on her doorstep. Kiba had been talking excitedly of a new friend at the Academy and was dying to bring him over. She had smiled widely at her son and nodded her approval. But when her son dragged a small boy with blond hair, steel-blue eyes and three odd marks like whiskers on each cheek into her home, she hadn't known what to think.

Inside that boy was the hell-spawned monster that appeared from nowhere and devastated Konoha with the undeserved fury of a hurricane. Inside that boy was the Kyuubi no Youko, the demon that had stolen the life from her dear Tsurugi. But when she looked at the reserved, almost shy boy that stood just behind Kiba as he was introduced to her, there was no anger at the child, no rage for the lost. There was no overwhelming sensation of hate. There was no need to scream and cry and howl at the world for what was taken from her and her children.

There was just an empty pain deep in her chest, and an even deeper feeling of sorrow.

She welcomed him into her home, acted as normally as she could, and yelled at him for denying the natural thing that hunger was when she brought around seconds and he passed on it for the sake of good manners. Hana was happy to see Kiba making friends. Kiba was happy to have his new friend by his side. She was reminded of the one she had lost, so far before his time.

For the first time in a very long time, not since the night of all that terrible loss, she cried herself to sleep at the fresh wellspring of excruciating memory. Images of happier times in a happier place were crushed beneath the claws of a beast spewing flame and foul air above the leaves in which she dwelled, and her husband – the father Kiba never got to know – was crushed just the same.

It took her a few days to properly recompose herself.

But it was not long after that she was summoned to the Hokage Tower.

_"I will not ask you to accept him into your home willingly. All I ask is that you remember just how much was taken from this boy on that very same night. Both his parents were killed; he had no other family to speak of; any real chance of the healthy upbringing he should have received, just like any other child of Konoha, was foregone the moment he was made a living sacrifice. The life he should have had was stolen from him, just as so many lives were stolen in exactly the same manner by that one terrible night."_

She had just blinked as the words flowed from the Hokage's mouth in a slow trickle of wisdom and regret. She had just blinked and realised how undeniably _right_ the Hokage was. The boy was nothing but another casualty of that night and of that demon, just another victim like all the other children left orphaned and crying in those lonely streets of rubble and ruin, bawling their tears out into a red night filled with blood and smoke. But perhaps he had it worst of all.

The rubble had long been swept away. The ruins had been rebuilt. The village, though still recovering, looked and felt as it once had. The scars of that night still ran long and deep, but they had all begun to fade except for one single thing: the boy.

For those who could not escape their grief, for those who could still not make sense of such a senseless thing, he was the one object blame could be placed on. If those memories and that animosity never truly went away, the boy would be kept at an arm's length by those who knew for the rest of his life. He would be Konoha's chosen outcast for the rest of his days.

He was just a child, but his life had already been decided for him, laid out as plain as day to all but him. It was cold, it was cruel, and she could not accept that. So she swallowed the grief, the pain and the hurt of the past, and she welcomed him into her home. If it was not for his sake, then it was for Kiba's sake, who seemed so utterly content with the calm, quiet friend he had already found.

She smiled at that memory.

Mere moments before her children returned, Inuzuka Tsume deactivated the silencing seal on the underside of her table with all the swiftness and stealth her years of experience had granted her.

And then she held back a sad, contorted expression as best she could at the sudden rush of emotion she felt as she remembered what she was guiding this boy towards, the plans already set in motion for him.

Even if he barely knew it himself, she already knew what his answer would be. Tsume just prayed to whatever gods were out there that he would one day find it in his heart to forgive her.

* * *

Later, with the sun finally set, the sky starry and clear, the night breeze cool but not cold, Naruto said his goodbyes and took to the streets of Konoha once more. Kaze trailed behind, air rippling in his stride.

It had been a pleasant evening, so like the ones he had spent before in the raucous company of Kiba and his family. They ate, they laughed, they smiled and they talked. There had been shouting, running, a few chairs knocked over, the table flipped once or twice, and a suspiciously smelly packet of something Kiba had been keeping in his room until Naruto found and threw it away before Tsume discovered it. Despite recent events, it had seemed almost... normal.

But it wasn't. The facade, though not truly a facade in any real sense of the word, had been in place. It faltered in places, too. It was obvious that Tsume had taken a moment to make sure painful questions weren't asked of him, mostly so he didn't have to see the face of his best friend marred by equally painful expressions. Hana herself made an effort to steer clear of any conjecture or rumour surrounding the tempestuous incident he was caught at the centre of, even if names had not been officially named.

Of course, there had been the few bits of positive news Kiba gave him of their class. He was glad no one had been hurt beyond dark bruises and broken bones caused by flying debris. He was glad Iruka-sensei was taking care to keep things quiet. He was glad Kiba's arm was healing properly. He was glad Shikamaru and Chouji expressed concern for his wellbeing in their various ways.

He was glad they were still alive.

Of course, his thoughts returned to the dark he found them straying too so very often. He didn't like those thoughts, but they weren't leaving him anytime soon. He had seen too much, choked on nothing at the sight of collapsed structures in the distant parts of the village, cried too much at the lives collapsed within them held so much closer to his heart now that he knew what he could never stop knowing.

As much beauty as there was in life, as much wind played in the skies that swam endlessly above the oceans of sand to the west, and as much he could feel in the air around him, there was pain in it all. No matter how much he stared into the undying light of the sun upon the rooftop peaks of Konoha and felt the breeze on his skin through a humming jungle of timber and steel, he could not stop hearing the sounds of life marching ever onward, through every moment of harmony and every cold flash of hurt in eyes and hearts and heads.

He couldn't separate one from the other.

But... he wasn't alone in it all. Maybe that was enough. Maybe he could find...

_"Trust me, kid. You'll make this mean something."_

Naruto blinked, wide-eyed at the world steeped in night-time wind.

"I... I think I get it now."

The trees he passed on the right waved to him as a breeze swept through them.

Naruto nodded to his formless friend. "It's about... worth."

Leaves shivered on their branches.

"It's about finding worth... where there isn't any to find."

Dust whirled across his path in tiny streams, and he smiled in response.

"Maybe I'm simplifying it a little, yeah. But why does finding meaning have to be complicated?"

A zephyr traced a cold line over the nape of his neck. Naruto stood still in the dim light of the back alley he suddenly found himself in, aware of everything around him in shocking clarity.

The buildings that dwarfed him, the whir of air passing through vents, the gurgle of rushing water through pipes, the hiss of steam and frying and cooking in kitchens, the metal-on-metal clashing as shinobi trained in the distance, the people in lines and crowds talking above and around and inside and out, the animals searching through nearby trash in secluded backstreets of grimy brick and dirty mortar, and the flowers that bloomed with fresh scents so late at night – all of it was beneath the watchful sight of a pale moon hanging far, far above.

The sensation of cold... _death_ lurking in the shadows of men and wind returned.

Kaze whispered in his ear, warm and calming despite the frigid air.

_Two sides._

There was a distant noise that was suddenly far too close as a coin dropped from a balcony somewhere to concrete below, a metallic _ping_ that rang out loud and piercing again and again as a circle of metal bounced against the pavement over and over.

_Yet one whole._

Naruto blinked, and the coin fell silent.

Warmth filled him, and then filled the air until the cold was negligible. It no longer bit into him so harshly. It no longer caused such vast realms of raging dissonance within his soul. The cold wind that sung old songs, forgotten to his day and age, no longer afflicted him like some kind of plague.

_At the end of it all, they were the same._

_Heat and cold, light and dark, life and death – they were two sides of each aspect so impossibly different, yet part of the same whole in a strange sort of dichotomy._

_At the end of it all, they were all wind._

_They were all Kaze._

Naruto blinked once more.

Those thoughts... were not his own. And then he thought of... _cycles_, a dream he couldn't recall in any more detail than inky shards lost to the void. He could see pieces of a whole, but he did not have all the pieces.

But despite the confusion, there was another sudden burst of something: determination. Because dichotomy was life, life was nature, and nature was wind. There was meaning, even in the depths of the coldest gale, even in the lives his mistakes had cost. _But never again,_ he said to himself.

Naruto looked to the night sky and the pale moon that no longer chilled him to the bone, felt the breeze that no longer slithered across his skin in icy tendrils, and heard the whispers in the air that no longer spoke of dark, twisted things lurking in deep shadow. It frightened him no longer.

And so he had his answer.

He had his answer, and he knew where he would be standing tomorrow morning as the sun dawned on a new day, light riding the first zephyrs of a new wind: Konoha's southern gate, at Sarutobi Asuma's side.

* * *

Unbeknownst to Naruto, beneath the bandages of his left arm, the swirling, spiralling scar glowed with grey light for the briefest of instants.

* * *

Nothing was the same. He realised that now. Too many things had changed for the present to ever resemble the past. There had been too much blood and slaughter, too much world-shifting revelation, and too many changes in him, body and mind both.

His scar prickled quietly, and the familiar grasp of a stormy field tingled along his surface.

There were marks on him and in him, symbols of a kind that ran long and deep. He didn't have names for them, but they were there nonetheless, making their presence known with every moment of beating heart and thinking mind. On his skin, in his chest, they were... _promises_.

After all, lightning would never leave him.

Something similar to a smile made its way up his face. It wasn't a show of happiness, elation or joy at the realisation of something new. It was the contentment and the security of reaffirming something he already knew so well, but it made him wonder... what would he be without Raikou?

_That's an easy one_, he thought. _Nothing._

He would be nothing. There would be little more than a glittering handful of shattered mirror. In those few remaining shards, there would lay the fractured image of something and someone once known as Uchiha Sasuke, broken into the reflection of a world twisting with red and black, oozing blood and fire from some hell he never wished to know.

He opened his eyes, and the unwanted vista of cataclysm ceased to be, swept aside by the youngest rays of daybreak and the crackling signs and sparks of life all around him.

Besides, this morning was different.

_"We leave tomorrow morning. Six o'clock at the southern gate. Pack everything you'd need for a long-term survival mission." Kakashi's one visible eye closed and curved upwards in an odd facsimile of a smile. "Note the emphasis on survival."_

Sasuke noticed. So he packed accordingly. Small tent, sleeping bag, ten kunai, fifteen shuriken, a few loops of steel wire, a small case of first aid supplies, five sets of clean clothes, plenty of underwear – perhaps storage scrolls would have been a better alternative to carrying it all on his back, but the ones he already had didn't seem to work for some reason.

The weight of the bag against his back was comforting in its way, reassuring in the knowledge all he needed was at his side. Then static sizzled on his shoulder, and Raikou reminded him that all he truly needed was within.

But that didn't stop him from admiring the beauty without.

The long morning shadows of Konoha's southern gate towering above him carried some way over the wide road that led further into the village. The slivers of orange light wedged in the gaps of everything and anything cast in retreating dark grew, flickering gently as the few who rose for dawn passed the threshold of immense shadow and swept across the light in a crackle of inner lightning as they walked and jumped and ran from paths to buildings and structures to trees.

At the rising of a new sun, the leaves came alive once more.

From somewhere down the road, he caught sight of a moving signal... _unknown_ to him, in a way. That was his best means of describing it, because it wasn't that he couldn't see it as it moved towards him. It was visible to him, plain as day like the spark of any other who trod within his range. But he couldn't... _understand_ it, not in the way he understood all others.

When he saw a person, saw their spark and the electricity running through them, he gained a glimpse of their nervous system. He had seen more than enough to realise that each and every person's nervous system was comparable. However much they differed, they all shined in similar colours and similar strengths. They all followed the same path.

Yet, when he looked at the one he didn't understand, it was different. While the colour was hard for him to truly distinguish, the signals ran the same length and followed the same path with the same strength as many others. But they were indistinct and distorted, as if blown far off the lightning trail by... _wind._

As a head of spiky blond hair came into view, he almost laughed aloud at his enormous misconception. It truly was one of the most obvious things in the world if he gave it just a moment's thought. For lack of a better phrase, he looked at the chosen of wind. The rules by which life played with lightning did not apply in the same way to someone like him. Of course he couldn't understand it.

But that wasn't to say he didn't understand wind's chosen. At least in part, he did.

After all that had happened, he expected to remain on his own. He had been robbed of everything. All he had left was the gift of lightning. The blessing of Raikou came to him at his lowest point, saved him from falling into consuming pits of despair. He would be forever grateful for that, but he thought he would subsist on lightning alone. That would have been enough for him. Raikou would have been enough for him.

And then along came Naruto – someone like him, almost exactly the same. Questions came with him.

How long had he been with the wind? That was where he wanted to start. And then he'd ask him what it was like, what his experience had been... and what he'd faced.

More questions came.

Had the wind frightened him? Terrified him? Chilled him to his core? Scarred him?

They came faster.

Did he dream of scrolls and cycles? Did he see images he couldn't understand? Sights he couldn't really see?

Faster_._

Was he visited by a jounin he didn't know? Taken to the rubble and the ruin? Told of what misfortune he had sown? Told the price of his mistakes?

_Faster._

Had he been swallowed up by oceans of guilt he could scarcely comprehend only a day ago? Had he been cast adrift on that consuming tide, a sinking ship on a sea of black storms? Had a beacon of hope shone through the murky veil on the headland he couldn't see and guided him safely to shore?

_Did_ –

"Hello, Sasuke."

The frenzied thoughts of his mind paused, and he could once more see what was right in front of him: a boy of roughly equal age in a green shirt, grey shorts and a backpack, blond-haired, blue-eyed and bandaged up the left arm – Uzumaki Naruto.

He blinked once, and then he composed himself. "Hello."

Deep inside him, Raikou sparked slowly, and another truth dawned on him: for all he thought of the one chosen by wind directly in front of him now, he hadn't really talked to him. There hadn't really been time. Yet now there was. Even for just a handful of minutes before Konoha's gate, there was time to talk.

He just didn't know where to begin.

"I... I'm sorry."

Sasuke looked up at the sound of Naruto's voice. "For what?"

"... A lot of things," Naruto said quietly, his words filling the air between them with something that felt like... _sorrow_. And then Sasuke began to understand just a little more.

He had never heard Naruto talk all that much. Not during class, and not outside of it. If he thought deeply on it, Sasuke had heard the occasional joke from him, seen the occasional smile and the occasional input. But they were rare moments interspersed in a larger medium of quiet, calm observation.

Naruto never put much into words. Sasuke started to feel the meaning behind them now. Raikou crackled again.

_Spark._

A memory came rushing back. _Wind roared. Lightning blazed. _And he remembered what it meant. He remembered what had been put at risk, and the price that had been paid.

"It's okay," Sasuke said.

Naruto bowed his head. "Thanks."

The moment slipped into a silence, neither comfortable nor uncomfortable until Naruto said something more.

"Did someone come to see you yesterday?" he asked.

Sasuke nodded. "Yeah. A jounin."

"Same here," Naruto said, though Sasuke didn't find much surprise in it. The backpack and the time of day gave it away just a little. But it did take them one step towards what could be considered conversing.

Naruto looked up, away from them both and towards the sky. "It's... kind of frightening, isn't it? How big it all is, I mean."

Sasuke looked up just the same, gazed at the cloudless stretch of blue high above. He looked up at the sky. He looked up at the birthplace of storms, of Raikou. He looked up at the realm of wind and lightning.

"Yeah," he said. "All of it."

And it was strange. Every last bit of it.

Terrible things had happened, but wondrous things had happened all the same. Even if he focused on just a few key points, the changes in his life were nothing short of mindboggling. But mindboggling was only the beginning. He had to remove himself quite a few paces to actually see what had changed, because they were not small by any stretch of the imagination.

They were things that reached well beyond the horizon.

He could sum it up in three statements that would probably sound insane if spoken aloud: first, lightning was alive, aware in a way he could never hope to express in words alone. Second, lightning had _chosen_ him. Thirdly, wind had chosen someone just the same. It took him more than a few moments to wrap his head around it, and only then did he realise the enormity of what he was so suddenly entangled in.

Raikou was a force of nature given form, one of the living powers that had shaped the world in its infant days. Raikou had chosen him, the same way the wind had chosen Naruto. It was only after seeing the destruction they had wrought without even meaning to that he began to understand what it all meant.

This kind of power – the kind of power that could be worshipped, that could be prayed to, that could be called _holy _or _divine_ – was lethal. If he misused it, it was the kind of power that could result in cataclysmic destruction, the kind of power that could end lives by the thousands.

It was frightening, and rightfully so.

It was the power of _lightning_, the golden strike from the heavens that brought life thundering into being. It was the power that rested at his fingertips, on his shoulder, in his skin, and deep within his chest, resonating in sparks of blue and bronze with every solitary beat of his heart.

But it wasn't the power of _wind_.

He looked at Naruto.

"Do you think we can do it?"

"... I don't know," Naruto said after a moment's thought. "But we have to try."

_Because if we don't, how many more will die?_

"Fifteen is too many," Sasuke said, training his eyes to the ground. "_One_ is too many."

Naruto nodded. "It'll be tough."

_"This won't be easy, Sasuke," Kakashi said, his lone eye as serious as his tone. "Not in the slightest."_

_He crouched down to his level once more, the motion made somehow relaxed by the man's relentlessly casual demeanour. "You're going to train. You're going to train like you never have before, in ways that will put your life at risk again and again. It will be brutal, one of the harshest things you'll ever have to do. But it is necessary."_

_He stood back up, and looked down at him again with that same sad kind of sympathy as before. "It'll be hard, but –"_

"But we'll live," he said, eyes once more on the dawning sky.

And they would. He knew they would, because Raikou said so.

* * *

He had not truly known what to expect when the moment finally came. Perhaps there would be mourning. Perhaps there would be some kind of momentous revelation as they finally realised who they were to each other. Perhaps there would be none of those things.

He certainly wouldn't have expected the first two followed swiftly by the third.

Naruto watched on in a silence interrupted only by the faint trails of morning wind that glided over his shoulders, down the wide-open path in and out of Konoha's gate, and out into the world. Kaze whispered of hopeful things as Naruto watched. As his sight switched from bandages on a right arm, he saw that Sasuke's dark, obsidian eyes began to glisten with something, a resonance hidden in the depths of daybreak's quiet air and the beating of a heart he didn't quite understand.

Every heartbeat was a pump, the pounding of muscle within forcing the flowing of blood throughout. But no heartbeat he had heard carried the kind of vital, dynamic weight that Sasuke's did. The quiet time he had spent on a thin hospital mattress beneath thinner sheets had been filled with the sounds of beating hearts, echoes across a building full of the living and the fading. Yet none were like Sasuke's.

None carried the same energetic, almost erratic weight of a heart of lightning.

That was the first part of his revelation. The second was that he could not fully understand it. So he stood there in a stretching, silent moment, taking in Sasuke's last few spoken words – few and far between as they were – and thinking.

He could grasp the concept of a heart. He could understand the muscle, the pumping, the veins, the arteries, and the blood that carried oxygen to all parts of the body. But the moment lightning fell into the idea of a heart, his understanding began to waver ever so slightly. The concepts felt shaky in his head, uncertain but without a real reason as to why.

But, of course, he already had a reason: _wind_.

Naruto stood next to lightning's chosen. He watched him look to the sky with sudden confidence and surety founded in a realm opposed to his, an idea from dreams and cycles still murky and blurred in his mind's eye. But he shook his head ever so slightly and cast off his thoughts of opposition, embracing the moment of clear, calm air that swirled around them both.

Without so much as a word, Naruto adjusted the shoulder strap of his bag and looked forward.

_Asuma sighed long and hard at his indecision. "If you make up your mind, you know where I'll be tomorrow morning."_

Naruto had made up his mind. So he was here, standing by Sasuke's side and waiting to stand by Asuma's, ready to make meaningless demise _mean_ something. He felt no more need to exchange words, and Sasuke himself seemed content with silence, so they waited for the idle minutes to tick by.

The long shadows of morn were shorter when he caught the scent of smoke-stained clothes walking towards them in the company of someone he didn't recognise. The pair of men in forest green and navy blue split apart briefly, and Sasuke walked to meet the odd silver-haired one while he waited for Asuma to approach.

"I had a feeling you were going to make up your mind, kid," the man half-grinned, the other half of his mouth still clinging to a smoking stub.

Ignoring the already rancid smell, Naruto nodded firmly. "I made my choice."

Asuma's grin faded as he rubbed a hand at the back of his neck. "I did tell you that we're going to be gone for a while, right?"

"Six months, I think you mentioned," Naruto said. "Can't really say I see why."

"Collateral damage, mostly," Asuma said, glancing towards the nearby buildings.

Naruto frowned. "That's not the only reason, though, is it?"

Asuma nodded. "Certainly isn't. You'll find out more about the... _challenges_ once we get there."

"What's so challenging about a forest?"

Asuma's grin returned. "Oh, you'll see."

The conversation came to an end as the silver-haired man tapped Asuma on the shoulder, and the two entered the guardhouse on the opposite side of the road. It wasn't more than a few moments later that they returned, Asuma beckoning him forward as the jounin turned for the gate.

Sparing one last glance for the village behind him, Naruto walked forward. Sasuke followed.

* * *

In the customary robes and hat of the Hokage, through the crystal ball atop his desk, Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Sandaime Hokage, watched the four of them walk free of the gate, following the wide trail that led out into Konoha's great forests. They would soon split in two and go their separate ways. One pair would head south while the other headed north and east. Asuma took Naruto while Kakashi took Sasuke.

Removing the weathered hands folded beneath the grey hairs of his chin, Hiruzen returned the orb to its drawer before retrieving a handful of items from the drawer above. Laying his pipe across his desk, pressing in the fine tobacco, and bringing a single ember to bear, he raised it to his lips and let out practiced ring of billowing smoke. He watched it slowly lose shape and form before fading from sight completely.

His old habit did not make breaking promises any easier.

_Take care of my son. Take care of my little brother._

The first was made in a will. The second was made in the sorrowful line of duty. Minato was remembered as the hero he was. Itachi was recalled as the traitor he was not. As Hiruzen watched the dawn of a new day, saw familiar shapes fade into distant trees, it was as if he trampled both promises into the dirt.

It only made the delicate situation of Konoha's future all the more viciously precarious.

Eight years ago and counting, the Kyuubi attacked. Namikaze Minato, legend of the Third Great Shinobi War and Yondaime Hokage, died. Konoha was devastated, both in body and spirit. Shinobi forces crippled in number and morale, war could have easily overrun them in the turmoil that had followed in the wake of that terrible day. But ever so slowly, they had begun to recover. Based on initial projections, in roughly nine years' time from that day, they would have recuperated almost completely.

Scarce months ago, the Uchiha clan was massacred by one of their own. Uchiha Itachi, prodigy of Konoha's co-founding clan and a growing name in the shinobi world at large, went rogue. In economy and reputation, Konoha suffered. The progress that had been made since the Kyuubi's attack had been set back two years already.

Little more than two weeks ago, a 'training accident' of unprecedented scale occurred, and a large section of northwest Konoha was demolished by a freak windstorm. Sarutobi Asuma, member of the Twelve Guardian Ninja of the Fire Daimyo and accomplished shinobi in his own right, returned to the village after five years, escorting the Daimyo to Konoha in what would be his final mission. The unusually small royal entourage arrived just as the storm hit.

Hiruzen sighed, turning his sight to the window behind and the grand view of his village below.

The Daimyo was unimpressed. Konohagakure no Sato's largest source of funding was on the line. The future of the village was at stake. They needed a plan.

The days after the Kyuubi had been brimming with those. Thousands of man-hours from the intelligence division brought a flood of reports down the hallways to his office, enough to fill the room itself and spill out the door. Some were of immediate use, some were immediately scrapped, and some were immediately filed away for future need. With modification, a number of those plans left to gather dust in dark rooms were brought to light and spread out before him.

They had options. With careful counsel, driven in part perhaps by desperation, he had made his choice. Then he began to prepare the needed assets.

Securing Uchiha Sasuke had not been difficult. A single offer had sufficed. Uzumaki Naruto had proved more complex, but the right suggestion from the right person brought him into the fold. Training the two was not only part of the current plan, but an investment and an insurance measure for the future. In times to come, they would be essential.

But six months of a jounin's time was a costly thing. With two of them indisposed with training, Konoha's mission quota fell. They risked losing income. They risked losing clients. They risked war if a rival village thought Konoha caught in a moment of weakness. In six months' time, however, the eyes of the shinobi world would not be on Konoha alone.

They would be on Suna.

The unannounced opening of his door interrupted his thoughts, but the tactile thumping of a cane through the floorboards told him who entered.

"To what do I owe the pleasure, Danzo?" the Hokage asked, looking up from the pipe in his hands.

A man of age comparable to his own with a bandaged arm and a bandaged head, dark-robed and cane-bound, Shimura Danzo settled in the chair opposite his. Danzo leaned forward, and the grip on his cane tightened. "Business."

Hiruzen tapped twice on the desk – once for his guard to remove himself, and twice for the sealing matrix embedded in the old wood to spring to life. Lines of dark ink shot out from nothingness, racing across the room, the floor and the ceiling until they were engulfed in arcane symbols. Blue light flared beneath Hiruzen's hand, and the symbols slowly faded away into the woodwork.

The grey eyes of the Hokage fell level with the exposed eye of Danzo. "I trust you have what we need."

"Here," Danzo said, hand leaving his cane aside and reaching into his robe to retrieve a single folder. "They returned three hours ago. Complete success."

Hiruzen flipped the file open, spread the few documents across the desk, and took another long, slow drag of his pipe. "So it would seem." His tone was not trusting.

"Hiruzen, my information is always reliable," Danzo said flatly.

The Hokage almost scoffed. "As are your operatives. You, however, are not."

His old friend's slight smile was all too knowing. "Indeed."

It was a risk to let Danzo maintain his operations in any capacity. Itachi had warned him as much, but now more than ever did the village have need of plausible deniability. In terms of information gathering, Root fulfilled that purpose to the letter.

The information on Suna's jinchuuriki was evidence enough of that.

"Will the Uchiha and the jinchuuriki be ready?" Danzo asked after a moment's pause.

Hiruzen gave a rigid nod. "Kakashi and Asuma will make sure of it."

Danzo made a thoughtful noise at the rear of his throat. "I understand your faith in Hatake, but your son..."

"Enough, Danzo." Body stiff in his chair, the Hokage's voice was steel.

"Very well," Danzo relented. "I will leave the matters of the Sarutobi clan to you."

Hiruzen's sudden mask of iron returned to skin, and he returned to smoking his pipe. "That would be for the best."

The brief meeting was over. A tap on the desk issued the retreat of invisible lines to the seal as Danzo stood silently and ambled to the door, accompanied by the rhythmic thumping of his cane against wood.

With his old friend and rival gone a few moments later, Hiruzen shook his head. If he could allow such things as the private matters of his clan to be wormed into discussions with Danzo, perhaps peacetime had made him soft after all. In the grand scheme of things, however, the issues of the Sarutobi clan were not as important as the future of Konoha.

A tired sigh escaped him.

Many things were disregarded in duty to Konoha. Family, friends, clans, comrades – when the leaves were weighed against the tree, they seemed to pale in comparison to the grand splendour of the tree itself. After all, what were a few lost leaves when the tree weathered the storm?

In the line of duty, sacrifices had to be made, and promises had to be broken. It was all for Konoha's sake that he put the boy he cared for like his own kin and the younger brother of a man who took the weight of the world on his shoulders in such a terrible position.

Konoha would be carried ahead of all others on the backs of two young boys.

It would all come to a head in six months, right at the centre of a grand display of military might that drew crowds, merchants, nobles, clients and missions from all corners of the Elemental Nations: Sunagakure's Chuunin Exams.


	10. 9

_From the Depths_

_Scroll 890; Memory N35_

_Category: Abilities Post-Conjunction_

_Our strength grows with time._

_We are Chosen by the elements, one for each of the Five. We are a multitude of things for them, but for simplicity's sake, let us say the Chosen stand upon the World for the Five. As such, we are granted authority over our element. We are granted command of our blessing._

_This sovereignty of sorts manifests in many, many ways, but there is the one most overt manner that we all share: control. Our will dictates the shape of the element around us. The possibilities are, perhaps, incalculable by the mind._

_I can stand upon seas. I can drive the waves upon the shore with a thought. I can raise oceans against land with a flourish of my hand. I can sit in the deepest depths, the places where no light ever reach, where Water meets Earth, and see all manner of creation swim above me as I breathe ocean as air._

_But I could not always do these things. Command is a right, but not a birthright. As time passes, we accustom. We train. We hone. We become more._

_In pursuit of this, many of us adopt mundane skills. We know many crafts and many trades, many schools of knowledge and sciences. We unravel the world with our human hands, as the rest of humanity seeks to do._

_Perhaps, most of all, we take to martial arts. Knowledge of conducting conflict with steady hands often lends us insight into our own powers. It is only natural that a thing of man reflects our own nature of command over nature._

* * *

The forest was uncharacteristically quiet.

From his perch on a meaty branch more than capable of holding something far greater in size than a boy of eight going on nine, Naruto looked left and right, sweeping his gaze across the hazy distance, his view obscured in part by the massive trees rising into the air like wooden pillars and columns to hold up the vast ceiling of green far above them all. He was not surprised to see nothing immediately dangerous – natural camouflage was a pretty common occurrence here, after all. He was, however, surprised to _hear_ nothing immediately dangerous.

"Huh," Naruto murmured to himself, head tipped to one side as he considered the implications of nothing trying to kill him at the moment.

_So..._ he mentally drawled for a few seconds. _That means no giant tiger attacks, no snakes of unusually large size trying to strangle me, no clouds of hallucinogenic mushroom spores, no enormous fly traps disguised as entire clearings, no acid-spitting leeches, and no damn bears. And that means..._

For the first time in a month, he wasn't spending his days in this godforsaken forest fighting for his life against giant animals that wanted nothing more than _him _in their_ stomachs_!

Naruto slouched against the thick bark at his back, lifted his head to the rolling green canopy more than fifty metres above and laughed in wanton joy at _the lack of things trying to eat him._ Just thinking that phrase brought a tingling rush of respite down his spine as he continued to laugh his ass off, and it felt _good._

It was good, because for the first time in a very long time, he could actually relax for a moment down here.

In a yawning sigh that Shikamaru would've been mightily proud of, Naruto felt his muscles coiled like springs unhinge, rubbed a tired hand along the aching neck he constantly craned from side to side in efforts to hear and see what was coming after him next, and, finally, released the ironclad chokehold he kept on his chakra.

Relief flooding him like the cooling breeze so very absent from this humid slice of hellish paradise, Naruto let the wind in his gut, resting at the very core of him, flow out of him like water from the floodgates at long last. He welcomed the sudden burst of windy reprieve to his worn soul like an old friend.

And there was some deeper truth to that, because he felt the wind surge in the warm air around him, his oldest friend returning in greater force. Kaze brought renewed vitality to the stagnant forest air he'd grown sick of breathing, full of floating leaves and moss and vines and the cute little humming birds to the damn scary falcons that made their homes high up in the boughs a world away from the deadfall and dirt of the forest floor.

He smiled, and then he laughed at the first sentiment he heard and felt rising on the brand new breeze, cool and refreshing despite the sun standing at the peak of its ascent, rays of midday light piercing the canopy like gilded spears.

"I've missed you, too, Kaze," Naruto all but hummed in his moment of virtual reverie. In the space in front, the seven-metre span from him to the oddly drooping limb of the next tree, the wind whirled in loose, casual coils, spreading heat thin across his body as more cool air branched out towards him.

Naruto sighed again. He really had missed this, this old way of understanding, the resplendent awareness of everything around him granted to him by greatest wind. He hadn't had the luxury quite so often in recent days. But he had it now, and he would make the most of it.

Naruto, breathing in deep, letting his lungs fill, inhaling slowly of the forest scents of wet earth, gentle rot and tender decay, he immersed himself in the hidden beauty of the forest he had not had the time to stop and see in so, so very long.

He ran his hand across the rough surface of the bark, letting his fingers trail up and down the many weaving paths the outermost grain had once taken. He had felt the bark of a number of trees such as this in his time here. Each was different, each not quite the same as the last. The passage of time had seen them grow to differ, to change from their brethren. The stories of those times of growth, of change, of brethren, were etched in the bark, beginning in the deep centre of the tree and spreading ever outward as wood became bark and new wood grew within to supplant the old.

Reaffirming the once iron grip on his core, Naruto breathed in and breathed out slowly, recalling the method that brought his chakra forward carefully, simply because he had the comfort of time. The slow trickle of the breeze turned to hushed shrieks and muted wails in his coils, and his chakra flowed forth. With a little bit of energy swirling unseen across his palm, wind whistled ever inward, resonating with the curious patterns of the tree in a curious noise he could describe as an echo that did not fade. Instead, the echo grew, and Kaze whispered to him the etched tales of the tree.

A seed fell from high above, and the dirt swallowed it. Rain fed it, and seed turned to sapling. The sapling spread roots into the soil, looking for more to make it grow. The sapling brushed against air, and the sapling was no longer a sapling. Time passed, and soft green things became harder, tougher and brown. It was a tree, and it searched for the light far above. It took long years, some full of rain, some full of none, to tiptoe towards the blue sky beyond the green one. Branches sprouted on its way, and the branches sprouted leaves. In part, brown became green again. When time enough had passed, the tree grew past its siblings to stand tall and proud in its place beneath the sun, its tale of triumph told fondly in the story carved in the bark by those long, long years.

The echo of the wind in the tree finally faded into the not-so-far distance, and Naruto tipped his head away from the bark after some time of lengthy sighs and wondrous understanding. He looked up into the upturned sea of green that stole the lion's share of light, leaving what little remained to filter down in weakened rays to the forest world below. He understood why each and every tree reached for the sky they could not see.

His mind wandered back to the trees of his home, and he considered the forests of Konoha for a moment. Those trees were not the storytellers that these were. He knew this from a young age, when he had first tried to truly listen to the quiet melodies of the breeze through the leaves that surrounded his village. Perhaps a little more than a hundred years was not enough for a forest to weave a tale in wood and bark, to draw in words from earth and water, to soak up songs from sun and wind. _But here..._

This one was ancient. Its roots spread back to a time when the world was... not as it was now, for lack of a better phrase.

He took his eyes to the vastness of the forest, both in size and scale. The trees were colossal, larger than anything he had ever seen. But from above, the sea of green and leaves that bathed in the sunlight stretched to the horizon, upheld by the pillars of a world below different in every way. Each of those pillars, those columns that beared the weight of an emerald ocean and its fluttering waves of jade, stood tall, each with a soaring pride and an imposing nobility befitting the most ancient of trees. Each had a tale, a grand piece of the grand saga of the forest told in their old wood and written in their older rings.

This place, though sharing a similar root, was not Konoha. In the natural way of things, it was greater than the forests of his home. And even for all its deadly trappings, the eldest splendour of the forest could not be hidden from one determined to see it in all its glory.

Naruto breathed in the changed air, and exhaled more of the same. It was cool, an invigoration that sank deep into his lungs and coiled tight, fierce and intense and terrible, but blessed with a gentle embrace all the same. Such was the wind of his weathered past, his intermittent present, and his hopeful future. Such was his bond with the wind of this world.

Such was his connection to wind that it let him know when something was about to kill him.

_Move._

Naruto flung himself across the chasm of trees with an instinctive rush of wind, kunai in hand and then barely in the bark, the metal shivering in his grasp and shaking in the tiny slot it dug for itself in the tree. The bark of these giants was tough as stone, and it got tougher the closer he got to the ground. But the branch he left fell fast, no matter how much like a boulder it was. A lethally clean cut in place of the old, dense wood was what he saw as he clutched his trembling kunai, pressing his feet as tight as possible against the bark, tensing his legs and ignoring the fifteen metre plunge to the forest floor below.

But what he couldn't ignore was the man crouched on the tree opposite with a layer of chakra on his soles he couldn't help but envy, his right arm extended, a trench knife tight in his hand, air honed into blades rippling visibly from its keen edge.

"Close shave, kid," Asuma smiled down from his place on the trunk. "One second later and I might've taken something important off."

"Good thing I dodged, then," Naruto smiled right back up at him. "I kind of need my head."

"Damn right." Asuma's grin turned deadly. In the adrenaline rush that followed, the forest was no longer quite so beautiful.

He pulled his kunai loose and dropped like a rock. Shuriken filled the space above his head. Naruto flattened himself to the tree and hugged for dear life, the saw-toothed bark already making good on the promise of red streaks running the length of his arms. Taking in a sharp breath, a thrust of wind hurtled him around the broadside of the trunk until he found his feet in the right spot and kicked off hard.

He flew from trunk to nearest branch, fingers scraping painfully along the underside as he looped up and over into a crouch. Gusting chakra already numbing the pain, a tingle of air at his neck told him to move once more. One foot already on the bark, Naruto pushed up and flipped away, quickly an acrobatic metre above the blur that Asuma's fist appeared from when it gouged a violent chunk from the tree. Splinters spread like steam, coming out hot and fast against the arm covering his face, little bloody streaks sprinkled atop the patchwork of raging red scrapes.

Rushing chakra threw him from the air to the closest tangle of branches. Naruto touched down as fast as he could, scampering on all fours for lower heights as more tree gave way to Asuma's explosive punch one step from landing in his turned back, showering broken wood down like bits of tinder all around him.

Then he heard a click.

Light burst into life behind him, glowing lines of orange taking to the air from speck to speck, from ember to ember as it grew bright enough to make him squint in the spare second he had to summon wind before it all went up in his face.

The muffled boom and blossom of light and smoke blew him to the next bough, catching him square in the chest with a breathless _thud _that made him see stars. He hated that damn trick.

The kunai still in his hand held him steady for the two seconds of teary eyes and aching upper body he waited between gulping down a breath and preparing to drop ten metres on nothing but forest air.

His hands were barely free when half of the branch plummeted from the tree, almost taking him with it as wind tugged him from its path, slamming him back-first into the tree with a painful shudder and a dull crack to the back of his head. But his kunai slowed his half-baked attempt at descent just enough for him to hear what was coming next.

_Well, crap,_ Naruto thought plainly.

Digging his feet into the bark and shooting down towards the forest floor, Naruto jetted away from the bark-splitting flying kick from Asuma that would've sent him headfirst into the dirt.

The leaves and soil filled his view fast as he tucked and rolled over gnarled roots and fallen branches, his whole worldview spinning for an instant. He shook his twisting vision clear and set off running with the wind at his back, weaving a complex path through the mammoth labyrinth of trees before he took to the branches above again with a hefty leap. But he could still hear the lightning-fast motions of his pursuer right on his tail, thudding into the bark and denting heavy depressions in the soil between chakra-driven flickers of the body. Asuma was hardly a moment away from his furious footfalls driven forward by the breeze.

He had an idea.

_Nearest one is fifty metres on the right. _The information poured in as chaotic soundwaves became clear in the echoing confines of his head. He dropped from the boughs on a cushion of air, rounded another gigantic, serrated tree and sped off to his target, dirt and decay tossed to the air in his gusting wake. He heard Asuma cleave through the misty trail of leaves half a second later. But he was already there.

Charging straight, Naruto's sandals clattered against the bark before he bent at the knees and used it like a springboard, exploding through the foliage in a burst of wind, only to come face to face with a hissing snake the colour of the trees and thicker at the neck than the boulder-thick branch it clung to.

Naruto stood dead still, muscles distressingly tense. The snake's forked tongue the size of his arm slithered free of its mouth, tasting the perturbed air once, then twice. He heard Asuma's soles press down hard on bark, enough to make wood groan and creak.

It all came together beautifully.

The snake struck like lightning, Naruto flowed around the creature's jagged hunting path like wind, and the beastly uppercut of Asuma's chakra-coated trench knife carved the monster's head from its body in a visceral spray of blood, gore, scales and more as it flew off into the trees, scarlet arcs whirling behind.

Jets of blood spurted every which way from the ragged stump of the slumping snake, a gush of hot crimson catching him in the eye as he blinked out the boiling red and dragged spiralling chakra from his core, pushed the swirling feeling up through his lungs, guided the floating sensation along his arms and out his splayed hands in a final coiled fist of wind.

The blast of compressed air tore Asuma off the branch and sent him smashing through the leaves, leaving a cloudy trail of red mist behind. Wind forced Naruto forward, past the flopping corpse of the snake, over the cracked and creaking branches matted with a few years' worth of reptile blood, through the airborne swarm of raining splinters and down to the forest floor at Asuma's falling form with the grip of a kunai scrunched tighter than ever before in his hand as he made for his exposed throat.

There was no way in hell he was going to miss now, not after six months of having his ass beat time and time again.

But Asuma had other plans.

His knife stowed away in a flash, Asuma's hands turned to a flurry of motion and signs that rapidly threatened to carry him out of range, out of the way, and out of reach. Naruto poured more wind out of his back in a last-ditch burst. But it wasn't enough.

His blade met a sudden log through puffing smoke before it ever came to rest over his teacher's neck; Naruto crouched on the deadfall of the forest, eyes wide at the fact he had actually thought he could ever hold a candle to a jounin as he was now. Asuma turned into another standing blur, flickering in front of him with an empty fist soaring through the billowing leaves, the cry of wind screeching behind the breakneck haymaker rushing for his face.

Naruto heard it, registered it deep in his head, and jerked backwards, just beyond the edge of Asuma's terrifyingly close knuckle for that whole stretched fraction of a second that whirled him by. Asuma spun with the fearsome momentum of his strike and his left leg lashed up and out in a back kick.

And then Naruto made the one mistake he knew never to make: he blocked.

His crossed arms almost crumpled beneath the shocking strength of the kick that sent him flying up into a branch as the forest passed him by in a stomach-churning blur of hazy shapes, bending him backwards and almost folding him in half before he flopped back down to earth in an aching puddle of bleeding arms and bruised bones. It was all he could do to just force down the bile he could feel building in his throat as the front and the back of him screamed bloody murder.

Then one of Asuma's trench knives, held in his clenched fist like brass knuckles, found a cold, cold place against the skin of his neck.

His teacher grinned wide, once more not looking as thoroughly _bored_ as he often tended to be. "I win. Again."

"I noticed," Naruto groaned, voice half restrained by the razor-edge of the knife atop his neck.

The blade came loose, and Asuma sighed. "Not a bad plan you had with the snake distraction and that kickass wind blast of yours, but you forget about the Kawarimi. Just because you can't actually do it do isn't a reason not to account for it."

Naruto sighed as he hauled himself to his shaky feet, quivering like a leaf caught on a wild breeze. "No need to rub it in, Asuma-sensei." The mixed blessing that was his altered chakra was kind of a sore spot.

He almost lost his barely stable footing as Asuma slapped him on the back with an infuriatingly jolly series of chuckles.

"My bad, kid," he said with a shake of his head and a grin. "But still, you're lasting a hell of a lot longer than you did when we first started this."

Naruto only just held back a visible cringe at the memory of that particular fifteen-second thrashing, ending with him flat on his ass in total defeat and Asuma flat on his in riotous laughter. At least he was managing a bit better now.

"Just over two minutes and forty seconds by my count," Asuma said with a considerate nod as he gazed skyward for a brief second or so. "New best time right there. Good work, Naruto."

He would've muttered something along the lines of "Thanks", but the sudden absence of adrenaline coursing through his veins made him more than a little distracted by the bleeding and the bruises and the scrapes and the slight dizziness and the peculiar scratching sound he heard every time he blinked.

"Naruto?"

The voice sounded floaty, kind of like Asuma-sensei was standing nearby but not really as he spoke through a thin bubble of rather murky water that suddenly appeared over the leaves and the trees and his hand when he waved it front of his own face to see what was actually going on.

"Naruto?"

And then he realised it was just his vision getting cloudy. That was a relief. A giant murky bubble from nowhere would've been severely more terrifying, like that time with the spiders and the nest and the few claustrophobic minutes he'd spent in that cocoon. That had not been fun.

"Naruto? Hello? Anyone in there?"

That had not been fun at all.

"Naruto!"

He looked up, somewhat dizzy and somewhat dazed at the funny swimming sort of image he got of Asuma-sensei with an increasingly scruffy beard that refused to stay in place on his chin, instead choosing to crawl all over his teacher's face using the sideburns for arms until it coated his entire face in a thick layer of hairy fuzz. That was weird. "Yeah, sensei?"

"Here, swallow this."

Naruto didn't have all that much time between the spoken words and the odd white circle thing that got shoved in his mouth to voice an opinion, silly as it probably would've sounded if he was sure he could even talk properly. He had even less time before the pill went down his throat, went to work, cleared up his vision of the weird, watery forest entirely, and then sent these strange kind of curtains that blanketed everything in darkness down over his eyes.

And then he remembered the condition of him coming to the Sarutobi forest: he wasn't allowed to know where the village was precisely, so Asuma had to knock him out every time they went for a visit.

That certainly explained the pill.

_Still doesn't explain that scratching noise when I blink,_ Naruto thought before he found a rather comfortable patch of wet leaves to drop into unconsciousness.

* * *

Asuma shook his head with a smile and a chuckle at the slumped, battered body of his student face first in the damp, already snoring moist dirt into the air with those almost explosive unconscious puffs of his. And those pills just made most people gassy. He never had gotten his head around how pills that caused gas translated to Naruto breathing with same sort of noise as a battlefield's worth of explosive tags.

"Oh, Naruto," he sighed as he leant down to grab a bruised and bleeding arm. "Always a mystery."

He hauled him up onto his back like he had a couple dozen times before, no less leaking bodily fluids now as he had been the first time he'd planted a fist in the boy's surprisingly resilient face. He always wondered why he hadn't broken his nose then, but Asuma just chalked it up to one more steaming piece of the weird-ass shit that came with the territory of swirling ink on a belly.

The Kyuubi was a whole different mess, but he supposed it was still just the littlest bit similar to the boy's insane affinity for wind. Oh, and the fucked-up, double-edged sword that they had decided to call his chakra.

He still couldn't figure out just why his chakra was _purely_ elemental, with not the slightest hint of normality anywhere in sight. They'd looked and looked and looked for a solution to that in scrolls older than his old man when they'd first got to work on something resembling a training regime, but they'd turned up jack shit. In fact, they had turned up less than jack shit, because jack shit would've been some kind of precedent set in records past for chakra that was this damn weird.

The kid couldn't use ninjutsu beyond his element, he couldn't manipulate the most straightforward of seals, and he couldn't touch on genjutsu. More than that, he couldn't reinforce his body, couldn't augment his muscles, and couldn't even come close to anything resembling tree walking.

There'd been a few rare cases of shinobi unable to use ninjutsu or genjutsu in the past, but basic chakra manipulation within the body was always in reach. Except when it came to Naruto, because Naruto was still a mystery. He'd been training him for six months, running him ragged in survival exercise after survival exercise in the Forest of Death's great-grandfather, drilling him in stealth, evasion, trapping, taijutsu, and teaching him to control his crazy-ass chakra pretty much flying by the seat of his pants. He wasn't just putting him through a ramped-up edition of the Academy's old wartime curriculum; he was throwing in endurance trials that would've had anyone chuunin or lower rethinking their careers, dishing out ambushes every second or third or fourth or first day, making him lose sleep agonising over what was next when the kid could barely get a moment's rest in a place where the wildlife would kill him for even trying.

Yet Naruto – a quiet, extremely observant kid with a love for nature, a hate for his cigarettes, and an affinity for wind that could wipe out a small army – kept on going.

One half of him was bewildered by this young boy's incredible fortitude in relearning how to run, jump, fight and flee with nothing but wind when everyone else had chakra to lord over him. The other half was fucking proud of the battered, bruised and sleeping kid draped over his back, getting drool in explosive puffs on his recently clean flak jacket.

But there was time for all that later. He had a village of monkeys to get back to.

Asuma disappeared into the trees with a burst of chakra, barely taking note of the bleeding wounds and bruises on Naruto's skin already fading.

* * *

Pulling the thick cloak tighter over his shoulders, a foggy breath escaped his lips, steamy air spreading, fading and finally vanishing into the falling snow after one last moment of defiance. That truly was the story of each and every breath expelled from his mouth into the thin mountain air: futile struggle. A single puff of warm air could only withstand so much before the cloud was crushed in the bitter grip of the icy sky. To think otherwise was foolish at best, lethal at worst.

Breath alone wouldn't keep him alive up here in the snow and ice, hence the cloak, the thick jacket, the warm pants, and the heavy boots. Despite the warmth he felt glowing in his chest, his skin was still vulnerable to the world around, and by extension, so was he. It was one of a few weaknesses he could not easily eliminate.

Right arm stretched into the long falls of snow, his bare fingers upturned to the drifting flakes, jagged embers of white and blue sparked to life in little electric splashes above his covered palm, the dancing, crawling shards of lightning slowly swimming away and drowning in the frigid mountain air.

Even though it faded so quickly, Sasuke relished the moment of powerful warmth that filled the space around his hand before his focus returned to thoughts.

Unlike the gaping hole in his guard to cold and chill, he could not dress this weakness in warm robes and claim a formidable, functional defence in its place. Because as much as he could view it in the murk of weakness, he could view it so much more in the light of strength: _lightning_.

The one amusing part of such great difference was that if anyone else dared to change their chakra and release it into the air without a purpose more than warmth, it would be like sending up a flare for the world to see. Luckily for him, it wasn't the lightning that made one known. It was the flaring of chakra, the change from flowing neutrality to radiant, vibrating Raiton. A skilled sensor would spot either, but the overwhelming majority of those sensitive to chakra would detect only the former. Elemental chakra alone was all but invisible.

Amidst the snow, so was he.

Shaking his head and retracing his biological steps, Sasuke let loose another steamy breath and saw to the present moment amidst sparse pines and plentiful mountains, all coated in the uneven glare of midday white. He waited quietly in the snowy wings of swaying leaves, listening and watching intently for something beyond muted windy echoes and unending white.

Anything would do, such as the sound of a footstep. Or a spark.

He was glad that after enough time, he had learnt how to sense those striking electric signals without _seeing_ them. Like an ever-present prickle at the back of his neck, a sensation enough to make those little fledgling hairs stand on end in the brutal cold, he could feel them when something out of the natural norm wandered into range.

Sasuke almost snorted. Like there was anything around these accursed mountains that actually _wandered_. The only things out here were the ones that _hunted._

No matter how useful his bio-electric sense was, it could only do so much for him when he caught... well_, wind_ of a balled, sparking mass hurtling towards him through the trees. His cloak, however, was surprisingly more helpful in that moment. One click of a buckle and the fabric unfurled around him as he slid from its warm embrace, right as a dog burst through it like a raging bull through a red flag.

He though it quite appropriate – considering the canine's name – when Bull blindly slammed headfirst into a tree.

When the dog recovered and shook the cloak to the ground, grunting and almost snarling, Sasuke was already chewing up and spitting out the distance he needed, blood charged with static, moving like a ghost through a world of white and wood to a good spot. The forest was sparse in places, but knotted and tangled in others, trees garnering thick, snow-laden underbrush – exactly what he needed.

Sasuke nestled low in the awkward curve and crook of a high branch, a light dusting of snow shed like unwanted skin as the bough settled beneath his feet. His chest rose and fell fast and heavy, an action just a few steps below heaving as he felt the electricity inside sizzle to life. The consequence of movement, motion, adrenalin was excitement, a deep stirring inside that spread through his veins.

Lightning wanted to play.

His bioelectric sense quaked as he felt something stomp into range. Sight alive, eyes nearly glowing from his place in the branches, he watched the approach of Bull.

Dealing with an animal whose strongest sense was smell in an environment comparatively devoid of noteworthy scents, it was only a matter of time before he was found. He was probably the most interesting thing for kilometres around.

But that was just because his blood was boiling with static, his scar that should've faded was prickling with electricity, and the lightning inside him was threatening to make his skin steam with the sheer _demand_ he felt to move, to act, and to _be_.

And so what he saw changed.

Without moving from the spot, it was as if he took step after step back as he stared at the sky, watching endless blue marred with wisps of white grow ever wider across his field of view. The depths of the world around dove ever deeper, and the uniform of white was torn asunder by the new, impossible saturations of natural colours from far below the snow.

With all within his vision stretched to wandering infinity, the fresh expanse of world ahead slowed.

_Everything_ slowed.

The moment was his, almost frozen in time as he watched everything play out. Through the delicate drifts of falling snow, he watched Bull charge over frosted roots he could see so clearly, through the snow-dusted brush made dark by winter's embrace, and towards the shaky branch of hoarfrost leaves he crouched on. He watched Bull leap, the tank of meat and muscle and black fur lined with white tear a heated swathe of rolling mist through the air, hot breath pouring from his gaping maw in droves like steam shrieking from a kettle. He watched teeth – gleaming fangs just as deadly as any kunai – knife and machete and shred icy wood like wet paper. He watched as the wood splintered, as canine teeth jutted through the surface and into the bottom of his sandal, forcing him to his feet and to another tree as he took to the air at a leisurely tempo.

Despite the forcible relocation, he was fine. He was better than fine

He could see, he could stare, and he could gaze upon all as he saw fit. He could look, move, and act at his own pace, unbeholden to time in a way none knew. In a moment's span, reduced to a glacial crawl, he was free.

And the feeling was _intoxicating_.

_One._

The dog could chase, hound and harass him to his heart's content, but Bull would never quite catch up. As long as the world was one step behind, Sasuke would always be two steps ahead, the power of lightning driving him ever onwards.

_Two._

He wondered what it looked like to a dog, or to others. He wondered what it looked like to see him move unrestricted and unrestrained from another's eyes, from a point of view that could not see the world as he saw it now. Would it be a wondrous sight to behold, to see one chosen by an element to immerse himself in it? Would it be terrifying to watch a human move with speed and grace that belied the body, that which defied the limitations of life? Would it seem alien, to watch a being gifted with an otherworldly power merely step where another would leap, to create thunder that rocked the heavens where the wake of another would only shake leaves? He really did wonder.

_Three._

Sasuke blinked. And then he stopped meandering within his mind when his mental count reminded him to look outwards, and he realised that Bull had nearly caught up to him, a big dog's leaping jaw full of teeth right in front of his face.

Normally that would've startled him, but he just blinked twice more. Considering he had the freedom of time on his side, he thought it better to use it than let it go to waste. Bull's looming fangs inched a few more centimetres forward in that next standstill of a second, momentum carrying him forward through frosty space. He could see the intense vapour leaking from the dog's rather imposing mouth once more, steam rippling the rugged folds of long-worn skin with little more than the force of breath alone through his nose just as well. The spikes of his collar dragged fine lines through the air, almost imperceptible against the backdrop of misty white to his picture of a big, black-brown mastiff trying to chew his face off.

_Well, I suppose I better move at some point_, he pondered.

Sasuke, crouched on another branch in a different snowbound tree, leaned gently to his right, sloping his shoulder and almost stapling his arm to his body as Bull flew gently overhead with all the grace a lumpy, canine mass of meat and muscle could possess.

And then the dog careened directly into the tree behind them with enough impetus to break the frozen bark into another rain of wooden shards, Bull buried up to his ears in ice and trunk. But the dog wrenched himself from the trunk as quickly as he was injected into it, grunting like mad as Bull turned with a scrabbling of claws and leapt at him again, powerful hind legs pumping with enough strength to make the wood buckle and the tree shiver like a leaf in a strong breeze.

Bull swept forward in another prolonged bout of slow-motion, high-detail imagery of flapping ears and flopping gums, to which he just leant aside to watch the dog tumble headfirst into another tree. But Bull plucked himself out again, perching in a strangely birdlike manner on the low, curving surface of the frosty tree, and then tossed himself at him bodily like some sort of bizarre, canine missile.

In real – or regular time, as he preferred to think of it – it would've been extremely hard to maintain such a disadvantageous position, suspended solitary in a frozen grove of trees on a branch while a dog whose movements were already hard to track hurled himself towards him from every possible direction, again and again. But he had the time, and he had the choice. He chose to watch.

And if there was anything he could watch for a split-second of eternity, it was the sight of a flying dog, rolls of snowed-on fur and eager gums flapping and flopping in the chilly air before squishing hopelessly into a tree.

As he sealed his eyes shut, shook his head ever so slightly and did his best not to chuckle, Sasuke let go of the crackling, blazing lightning within for a micro-moment's space. The circuit switched off, and then switched straight back on. But the electrical disconnect handed Bull the chance he needed.

Sasuke's eyes flew open an instant after the instant he needed them, the sensory feedback of his electric sixth sense flooding his synapses with a static burst a moment too late. He was moving right without enough speed while Bull was moving straight with far too much, the fangs at his shoulder meant for his face as teeth tore through his clothing, flayed frigid channels into his skin, and sent an already crystallising mist of hot blood spitting and spattering through cold sky.

_Mistake_, his mind hissed at him as he fell into the numbing embrace of snow in a rain of his own sparking, crackling blood showering violently warm on his clothes, his face and the icy underbrush he lay in. He blinked once, and the bending, overexposed contrasts of colours and trees faded ever so slightly, endless blue and frost-white filling his view of the world around.

One would think an excess of time to act would grant an excess of careful, considered actions, but who could fill every moment with caution when there was such beauty to take in? Even as it weakened in strength, the brilliance with which he saw was not something he was ever willing to waste.

The sight that lightning granted existed as lightning did: in sparing, stormy moments, short bursts of blue forks and white sheets, flashes of light blinding to all but him. And he could see it still as the world returned to motion, faster and faster as he saw twigs shake at a known rate in the chilled breeze, heard growls no longer so stretched and distorted, heavy and heated breaths coming at him closer and closer, only felt so keenly in the sheer difference between the temperatures of an ice-cold clime and the hot grunts of a fanged, black beast called Bull.

Like lightning, Sasuke discarded contemplation, threw aside the trees, cut through the sky, pierced the clouds, and existed fully in the freedom of the moment that was _his_. On his feet lighter than snow, on his breath faster than thought, in his blood hotter than fire, lightning blazed.

The moment that was his froze: a sight to match the state of the day. In the moment that was his, he saw what was to be. Towards the moment that was his, granted by Raikou's blessing, he moved.

The world resumed.

Sasuke slipped from the big dog's lunging maw and turned on an electric dime, a scarce centimetre between him and teeth before he flashed past the assault, rammed a lightning-fast elbow down into the thick rolls of skin and fur behind the head, and finally forced those fearsome fangs into the white below with every last gram of his weight and formidable momentum. The massive, steel-corded ball of muscle and mass that was Bull fell with a satisfying thud in the unpacked snow.

After the passage of that one second, Sasuke breathed. The adrenaline evaporated. The immense furnace of the moment that kept out the cold between the wounds and his blood dwindled. And then his body relented.

He fell to the powder, his naked fists pounding into the wet ice as his torso heaved and his lungs felt like aerated rags strapped to his innards. He hated this feeling with a genuine, burning rage, though it was strange how much powerful emotion that one, simple biological reaction could elicit: pain.

Because, now that he finally had the time to feel the lines in his shoulder, the ultimately shallow but wide fissure that had fell on his flesh when it had been sundered by fangs of steel through skin, his body crawled with energies. Like snakes, he could feel them slithering over him, through him and his weeping wound, swimming through his blood, within and without. The damp red dripping into the snow hissed, crackled, sparked and steamed as it leaked and pooled, and the flame-hot liquid his machine of a body ran on parted the white like waves. And it _hurt_.

Even now, he failed to understand why healing hurt.

Maybe it was the method – the smell of scorched, blackened and burnt skin as lightning worked its way through his flesh permeated the air. A mix of will and habit stopped him from gagging on nausea incarnate as the awful stench wafted into his nostrils.

But maybe it was the presence of so much blood – lightning flowed through him like water, and only through experience and wounds had he learned that blood was the conduit through which it ran. Every drop was alive with a thousand strikes and storms, brimming with flashes and thunderclaps. When it took to the sky, it exploded from his body with instants of violence, singular moments of the same entity spread across a million different facets of existence.

Or maybe it was just that it taught him a lesson – _don't bleed so much._

He grimaced out a faint smile from the clutches of his fierce, paralysing agony. It was never this bad from mere cuts and scrapes. Perhaps this was quite a serious wound. But at least it didn't knock him out like it had the first time he'd screwed up.

As his shoulder pieced itself back together, blackened flesh spreading in a strange, twisted facsimile of new growth, the shudders of flowing energy thundering through his veins settled from their unbearable frenzy, wild, thrashing and uncontrollable. The fierce wisps of steam climbing from his skin vanished into the ether. The pain, loud, brutal and punishing, faded to a dull, ringing hum in his ears. His raging, tormented blood grew calm, and his breath knew peace.

But the world did not.

Because the violent reaction to an interruption of the circuit that was his body, the repair and maintenance of wires and conduits of flesh and bone, the automated thing that looked like healing but still felt like torture, stripped resources from places they were not needed. His electrical sense vanished for just a few moments while his body strung new cables and cords within, a framework and a roof over the wound to build on when time permitted. So he didn't feel the encroaching presence until the circuit breaker flipped and his sensory array re-engaged.

The kunai came down like black rain through the snow. But in the next instant, they were drifting down as gently as the snow itself hanging still in the newly frozen air, each blade as bright as day. His chakra surged and crackled, twisting electrical currents arcing out and filling his veins, his eyes, his mind, his muscles as it set his renewed blood ablaze with light. Time didn't slow, but he sped up with the mighty storm of Raikou's wordless voice in his ears.

A knife's edge away from a missing eye, Sasuke took one step to the left from death and let his vivid world of lightning fade. The snow resumed, and the air was full of blades once more that perforated the steamy shape of a body he left behind. The only corpse for Kakashi's kunai was made of heated mist.

But it did not stop.

Shuriken shot through the air, stars that streaked not light but steel. Sasuke's grasp on lightning did not waver, did not bend, as resolute as the metal that rained. Turning in one smooth, swift motion, he pulled a black blade from the tree behind as he stepped away from the not-unexpected, not-sudden blitz from his left, manoeuvring the kunai gently, only as he needed it.

The stars drifted straight, like the snow but not. The kunai clinked in a strange, echoing manner as it tapped and motioned and urged and ushered the sharp edges away from him, one that would not have made sense in the time his attacker would have perceived it all. The disjointed, slow progress of all but him would have been alien, an inoperable image, difficult to observe, harder still to stride through with the ease of lifetimes he had not lived.

He released his grasp, lightning faded and kunai fell, and Kakashi was before him at an opportunistic angle a split-second past the elongated rush of projectiles from the front and the left. The man loomed high and tall, a blur of hushed greens and greys tipped with silver vaguely shadowed by the muted sun at his back. A fist – a left jab, he recognised as it all slowed – hurtled towards him, for the neck.

Height made a quick, crippling strike easy for his elder, but lightning could level all. The playing field was no different.

Sasuke leant. Drifting like snow as Kakashi drifted him by with a follow-up right cross, he struck back –direct like lightning. With speed in his body and electricity surging in his fist, he aimed low.

Kakashi had his advantages. Sasuke had his.

Grasp fading, snow falling, Kakashi anticipating, a ball-numbing blow was avoided as his opponent rotated, his back to the blow – a move he'd pulled before.

Sasuke slowed it down, perceived the blur in pure clarity, and brought his left leg up to where Kakashi would arrive. He almost saw the knife's vague glint appear a millisecond too late.

Abandonment was an easy thing to think, but harder to put into practice when everything was so _short_. The distance, the time – everything but the kunai that emerged from Kakashi's approaching hand, curving around and across his body in a perfectly fluid motion, practiced and precise from years of honing his body to be as sharp as the blade in his firm but loose grip as it closed the gap.

The tip glanced as it drifted by, no more than a pinprick through the warm material that still managed to draw and throw blood into the air. Perhaps a centimetre in height was not impressive, but first blood was first blood.

He watched it rise, and he knew he had lost.

The instant he felt that little jolt of pain, that little interruption in his skin, the circuit was tripped, the process of repair, maintenance and improvement began, and the flow was re-engaged a split-second. But there was a gap, a moment when the stream of lightning in his blood fizzled, cut as he had been, a sudden flush of overwhelming, soul-crushing absence from the light of his life that hit him like a full-body blow he was only just prepared to take.

And just like that, Kakashi's blur was back in place, covering him, embracing him, wrapping him in the shadow of speed and skill that he was. Sasuke could only just understand what happened next as the clouds wheeled overhead and his sensation of sense keeled over like a boat on stormy seas, tilted and tempest-tossed.

He was glad he hit soft, numbing snow in place of hard, frozen tree as his chest burnt, his blood boiled and Raikou raged with thunder in his ears. He lay facing the clouds, feeling the snow on his skin, soft like sheets, gentle as it fell. Pain blossomed like bruised flowers in his chest, but he was gifted with this place of deepest winter, a paradise of snow-capped peaks that denied the presence of spring with every defiant, frosty breath. His vision wavered between white and black, blots and spots swimming and flashing over his view of the sky, waiting for his world to settle.

And then he felt a sandpaper tongue and floppy jowls dripping in saliva slobber all over his face.

Bull licked once more, Sasuke closed his eyes and took it like a shinobi under interrogation, and the world resumed.

"Having fun, you two?"

Sasuke opened one eye in a half-squint, doing his best to keep the cooling liquid out of his sight. Kakashi was crouched, knees bent, arms rested on his thighs, hands dangling with a casual quality that pervaded his teacher's being relentlessly. And, of course, his one visible eye was closed, curved upward in that oddly poignant facsimile of a smile.

Bull grunted. Sasuke did his best to remain stoic in the snow despite the drool on his face. Kakashi kept on smiling with his eye.

A few seconds ticked by, and Sasuke broke first.

"Fine. Help me up."

And then Kakashi was hauling him over his shoulders like the boar they were probably having for dinner, all because his chakra was spent.

He remembered what was said, the good advice he had dismissed at first because lightning was his domain.

_"Bursts only, Sasuke, or you're going to run out of chakra real quick."_

Kakashi was dead right, because running on overload was a sure-fire way to run him dry in a manner of minutes. If his chakra was oil, then he was setting the entire reservoir on fire and using the heady, toxic fumes that billowed out of it like the greatest stimulant there was and would ever be. Problem was, as soon as he ran out, the descent was sheer, sharp and very, very likely to make him drop dead midstride.

So, to reduce the risk of dying just because he liked the way the world looked in that overexposed, ridiculously saturated explosion of colour that came with it, he restrained himself to what amounted to second-long glimpses behind the door. Just a peek behind the curtain, and he was fired up and ready to go. Perhaps he made it sound a little too energetic, but tapping into the circuit of lightning that ran through him was always an experience in and of itself.

It was as if he ducked his head into his electrical stream, drank lightning like water, and set his voltaic heart alight in a visceral, vitalising _rush_ as the world he knew departed for the space of a moment, replaced by a different kind of vast expanse in a single, explosive instant of brilliant colours and blinding light.

And it was like that every time. Hell if he knew why it was still so damn beautiful.

But then he had to go ahead and get caught up in it. Again.

_Good work, Sasuke. Great job._

But it was good advice.

He didn't like it, he wasn't going to admit it was good aloud, and he was going to ignore it on occasion.

But being carried around like the evening meal, exhausted and fatigued, drained and dry, was quite the clever consequence.

Despite the terrible pounding in his head, the ache in his muscles, the weird palpitations of his heart, and the strange, phantom sensations that flitted worryingly about his nervous system, he supposed the worst part of it all was that a dog had come up with it.


	11. 10

_From the Nexus_

_Scroll 62; Memory N513_

_Category: Archive/Forge/Depths/Nexus/Zenith_

_We are intertwined beings._

_The simplest manner that the Five may sustain us is by sustaining souls. When the physical form perishes, the soul is made to linger, and conjoined with another. One great shard links each soul. There are five great shards, five Chosen._

_We are beings made replete with memory._

_And I, the sixty-second Chosen of Lightning, can remember everything, for I was there. Their memories are our memories. Their souls are our soul. Our soul is Lightning, and our place of memory is the Nexus._

_It will remain as such for many cycles to come._

_For the one who remembers this next, know that I am sorry for what I have done._

* * *

The forest had a hierarchy of sorts. A food chain, he believed it was called, was something that environments that harboured living things all possessed.

At the very bottom, was plant life – plants did not hunt, nor did more than a few specific examples kill other things as a source of food. Plants merely sat still, soaked sun, and did their best to proliferate. As sunlight was not particularly difficult to come by, plants were the most plentiful of all things in the forest.

Above the plants was what ate the plants – herbivores, being the appropriate term. They fed on the largest source of food available to them, whether it was leaves or roots or fruits or flowers or something that was potentially lethal to one species but surprisingly beneficial to another. Again, they did their best to proliferate, and with the second largest source of energy, their numbers were high, but less than plants.

Then there were the predators, the hunters, the carnivores, the meat-eaters. They were those that shed lifeblood beyond sap and pollen to live, feasting on the living and the breathing and the trembling with teeth and claws and traps and more. Their place at the peak, the last link of the chain, was a bloody one. Their source of food was third, so their numbers were fewer, and competition between species caused diminishing populations all around.

Violence for the sake of violence was needless. But violence for the sake of life was necessary. As he saw it, life, no matter its form, merely consumed itself, bottom to top. It wished to develop, so it had no choice but to swallow its own limbs and grow new ones in their places, with different appendages and different functions.

Renewal was a harsh thing.

Well, renewal was harsh unless one was sentient. Then that was just a whole other hurricane of confusing dynamics and strange logistical problems wrapped up with emotion, morals, ethics and a great many things he had no real knowledge of beyond words and guesses.

This strangeness applied very much to humans, but it also applied to a particular group of the forest's denizens. By virtue of not only strength and power, but cunning, cleverness, and the tricky advantage for some that was called chakra, they did not stand at the peak of the forest food chain.

They stood on another mountain altogether.

Though, it was hard at times to understand _why_.

"Can you please get off my face?" Naruto's words tumbled out of his mouth awkwardly, tongue halfway stuck between the little bit of space between his teeth and the monkey's butt a bare centimetre from his face.

Though he couldn't see the action, he heard and felt the tiny shifts of muscle and flesh in the hairy arms and legs locked tightly around the back of his skull as the little monkey that couldn't even reach his knees from the ground shook its head.

Naruto took in air through his nose, trying to ignore the potent scent of primate wafting into his nostrils with reckless abandon. "Please?"

Again, the little monkey shook its head.

"I'll scratch you behind the ears?"

He received one more shake of the head.

"I'll get you a... banana?"

He got a skull-splitting shriek into his ear this time.

"Okay, okay! You don't like bananas, I get it." _Even though that somehow goes against every preconceived notion I've ever had about monkeys ever._ "How about you just pick stuff out of my hair?"

He sighed in relief at the sudden lack of monkey butt in his face as he finally felt the little monkey nod his head and crawl up to sit in his hair and pick the edible bits and pieces out that stuck around when he didn't wash for the larger part of a month.

And then he heard the dry curling of Asuma's lips a metre or so away.

"Don't you say it, sensei."

Asuma's grin widened. "Naruto..."

"Don't you dare say it, sensei."

His wiseass smile turned almost predatory. "What's with all this –"

"Don't say it!"

"– monkeying around?"

Naruto's gaze swam slowly to the ground as he sighed. "You said it. Again."

Asuma sat down just beside him, the usual stink of smouldering cigarettes not far behind. "That's because I won. Again. And you know damn well that it's one of the two things I say after I win. Remember what the other is?"

"'Thanks for choosing Aerial Adventures with Sarutobi Asuma – kicking your ass sky-high, twenty-four years and counting'," Naruto recounted with a long overdue groan, burying his face in his palms and nearly tossing the little monkey on his head across the thick, tangled floor of woven wood and vines.

"Damn straight," Asuma half-laughed, half-coughed on the sudden rise of thick smoke from some metres away. "Guess they're getting the bonfire started early tonight."

"Yeah," Naruto nodded, careful not to send the monkey perched on his head – rather occupied with pulling dirt and insects loose of his matted mess of blond hair and spikes – bouncing over the platform of wood and vines and straight into the big fire at the centre of the village in the trees that was soon to be roaring high into the evening sky. That would not earn him many points with the locals.

And he rather liked the locals, save for the occasional monkey butt he got shoved in his face.

Spread across the platforms and huts carved from rough and knotted wood, the strangely wide-open meeting places of strangled branches and vines, and the ancient halls that filled the treetops with daily song and evening oration, there were a great number of them. He could count them if he so desired, just from the heartbeats he heard all around him through the vines, the leaves, the bark and the wood. Each was a pulse that became a wave that rode on the air, each a telltale signature of time and place, stress and age, truth and peace. Sitting still before the growing flames, feeling the whisper of whirls and eddies in the night breeze, hearing the hearts of hundreds, he found himself at the centre of a community he had come to know quite well.

With an upwards glance at the young chimp on his head, rifling through his hair for edible things fleeced from the forest floor, he entertained the notion that perhaps he knew it too well. If the smell of monkey butt was familiar by this point, he'd spent far too much time in the forest.

But too long a time or not, he knew this place now. He knew the home of the Sarutobi.

The Sarutobi were an old clan, and far before the idea of Konoha was ever conceived, they had come to live in this forest alongside its first inhabitants: the extended tribe of apes, monkeys, chimpanzees, gorillas and all sorts of primates that went by the same name. When the Sarutobi clan had made the journey to Konoha, the Sarutobi tribe had stayed behind in their ancestral forest. With the sudden absence of the clan came a kind of uncoupling, a loosening of an intimate, almost symbiotic relationship between the clan and the tribe. The Sarutobi that had forever been one became two, and yet they remained linked.

A rite of passage for those of the Sarutobi clan was to venture to their ancient home and spend time, both living and surviving, with the tribe. The young men and women who journeyed forth learned of their roots among the roots, learned of their past written in their halls of history, and carried it with them into their future. It was a means of maintaining the still deep connection between clan and tribe, though it was of course far more symbolic in nature than the conventional permanency of the blood-written Sarutobi summoning contract.

Of course, despite how poetic and meaningful it all sounded, he learned most of this in extremely offhanded conversation with Asuma-sensei, spoken in chewed-up, smoggy words between mouthfuls of food and the occasional lungful of smoke. Naruto couldn't help but find it odd that he talked about the long and illustrious history of his clan just because it was something to talk about.

And then there were the long lulls like now, when Asuma-sensei said nothing, he said nothing, and they were perfectly comfortable watching the fire rise higher, seeing primates of all shapes and sizes drop and climb into view from above and below around the lowered pit of stone and clay in the centre of this arena-like space up in the trees, and feeling the little monkey on top of his head still rooting around at the roots of his hair for something else to eat. Other than the distracting scent of monkey butt still lurking unwanted in his nasal cavities, it wasn't all that bad.

But then he remembered what sort of gathering this was, what it was about to become, and despite its beginnings and preparations seemingly the same as all the other celebrations, festivals and trivialities held in his time in their midst, he forced his own thoughts away from such trivialities and focused on what was important: the coming funeral.

A great wooden container – quite like a bucket or a bath, but larger than both combined a few times over – was lowered over the fire by ropes and pulleys hidden in the branches. Water rushed out. Steam rose up with a hiss as loud as the crackling flames and the breaking of burning wood into splinters and embers. Water not consumed by the heat was left to flow outwards, into the floor made of the canopy, branches and brambles and boughs woven with vines and wood and age-old care and tradition.

The drenched, blackened logs were slowly removed as the gathered began to settle into stillness, and the pit of fire, their witness and host to celebration, was left empty. A gaping pit of decades-charred clay and dust that smelt strongly of the forest around was what remained.

It was then that, from deeper in the village, where the homes and houses of the tribe lay, drums sounded. He listened briefly with intensity, and then relaxed his senses. He knew where they were, what they carried, and what they brought.

Two in front and two at the rear of the procession wielded instruments of taut and worn animal skins, slamming at them with enormous palms and enormous practice. The resonance of their taps carried far and wide, an announcement and a message louder than any shout, call or siren.

The four at the heart hefted what he would have first described as a litter of woven wood, but it lacked a throne. It was the domain of one perhaps worthy of such nobility, yet it did not carry the trappings of such. It was simple, without ornament, but with great purpose.

Finally, between the first two ceremonial drummers and walking before the carriers, a leader walked tall.

Naruto, along with the rest of the gathered, waited as the drums grew louder and the silent marchers drew nearer.

They entered the meeting place from the largest entrance, an ornate gateway of carved scrollwork and hewn history. The bearers with a litter meant for more than royalty, the drummers with their slow tattoo of tribal melancholy, and their leader appeared from the gloom of a walkway of woven wood and vines as wide and thick as any road.

The meeting place – a vaguely hexagonal space suspended in the trees, sporting three tiers of flat seating, divided in the centre by the main road's exit and entrance and facing the fire pit at the centre – was a space meant for many things. It had held festivals, feasts, revelries, theatres, artworks, meetings and grand moments of entertainment – all things that bonded this community, already so very tightly knit, together.

On that same scale, drifting between celebration and sadness, funerals held a place in the order of things.

It was only natural, but not for the beasts in the plains, or the birds in the sky, or the fish in the sea. Their passing was held as a failure to the rest of their kind. Their duty was to grow, to feed, and to reproduce; they were to spread their kind as widely as they could. If they died, they were not strong enough.

But for a shinobi to fall only to the ticking hands of time? Then he had been strong enough.

_Strong enough to outlive all his friends_, Naruto reflected, right before he opened his eyes at the final beat of the drummers, the last thudding step of the bearers, and the almighty presence of the leader of all those gathered in silence.

Dark skin the tone of charcoal, flowing white fur that spoke of experienced years, the rippling muscled bearing that supported it all, and the hunted pelt of a legendary tiger worn over the white-trimmed mesh and the black cloth below – if he had been standing sentinel in the glowing light and long shadows of the once-roaring bonfire, the Monkey King Enma would have been a fearsome sight indeed. But, with the fire gone, and the flames left now to dwindle, crackling and sputtering before grave eyes, Naruto recalled it for a moment from memory, and compared it to the solemn, contemplative being before him.

He did not look so much a beastly warrior as he did a sober mourner, straight-faced and serious in the relative darkness. It was appropriate for what he knew was next.

Thick bundles of dry twigs and fallen branches were placed neatly in a crossing pattern in the pit. As the thick dust – a substance of wooden shavings and a strange sap he knew from unfortunate experience that ignited far too readily – was scattered by the last of those preparing the pit in the quiet, he knew fire would spread fast.

The litter was placed above the precisely laid fuel, and Naruto saw the body with his eyes, not his ears.

It was tradition, that when the litter was laid the body remained as it had in life.

The man had been old, his thinning hair white like snow, his chin grey like steel, his skin weathered like stone. His exterior had been hard, fierce; a fighter's physique to the end, but his eyes of mottled, rippled brown had betrayed a tired tenderness when Naruto had looked his way in his times in the village, when he had been told stories by a mind still intact, a man still lucid. But now, laid against the wood, those eyes were closed, his hair was damp, his chin was moist, and his skin glistened with the same kind of liquid bonded to the dust thrown like incense.

Naruto could not help the sadness that embraced him at the sight.

And then Enma began to inhale, a slow, powerful sound that filled the silence as easily as wind filled the world. But breath leapt from lung to lung like fire, a conflagration that swept over the mourners as they inhaled together in a vast wave of resounding echoes and primal heartbeats.

Naruto did the same, joined in the expanse of the exhaled breeze that came rushing forth, a part of all he felt and saw.

Across from him, Asuma-sensei rose silently and descended the steps to his place near the pit, his walk firm and his gaze resolute. Enma nodded once in his direction, and his teacher sat cross-legged opposite where Enma stood.

The first part of the ceremony had concluded. The second began when Enma clapped his hands together, fingers skyward, palms pressed. The sound called out, loud and long, fading quickly into the forest. Enma held firm, eyes shut, hands clasped in silent prayer and quiet recollection.

The action was repeated again and again through the meeting place. Claps rang out one by one, a slow, stilted applause as primates of incredible variance all bowed their heads in prayer. Naruto replicated the motion, clapping his hands and bowing his head.

But he did not know what to pray for. He hoped his respectful silence would suffice.

In the quiet, his mind wandered. It was what he did, what he had done since his life had begun. His senses stretched, his mind broadened, and he became open to the world, taking in, absorbing, recording, inscribing. Wind guided his thoughts like it had guided his first breaths, his first steps, his first words. In the force that had forged him, he found rest as those around him, in this forest founded on earth and fire, prayed.

He had wondered on the nature of the Sarutobi tribe, their association with fire and earth despite their home in deepest forest. It seemed strange and opposed at first, but when he had asked his questions, the answer came simply: _home_. The ancient forest that spread like a sea rested within the embracing expanse of an older volcano, a great earth-borne beast the size of a nation slumbering and dormant for untold millennia. The connection to fire and earth came from below.

There were places in the forest that smelt strongly of smoke, steam and sulphur, places where the ground beneath the uninterrupted centuries of deadfall and decay was still dry, arid and cracked, and where magma had once rumbled and flowed far below. The deadly denizens of the forest tended to avoid such locales, treading carefully in wide circles around it, where the heavy paw-prints of cats much larger than him made painstaking trails and efforts to evade the centuries-old scents of hellfire and brimstone.

He remembered those connections to earth, to flame, to forest, and it was of this the King of Monkeys spoke. It was there he received his answer.

"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. It is here we begin, and it here we end. We rise up from the dusty ground, live among the trees, and burn bright as lights in the dark. But all flame must one day dwindle, and all must one day return to ash and dust. With the fire of a beloved soul fading to embers, we now return his dust and ashes to the forest from whence he came."

At the foot of the pit, Asuma made three hand seals and exhaled.

The funeral pyre erupted in flames.

Enma's eyes closed firm. "And, at the last, he returns to the soil on a fiery tide."

The silence of the gathered, the quiet that had swamped the gathering as Enma spoke, ensued, a calm gently disturbed by the sounds of crackling flesh and burning wood beginning their slow descent back to ash and dust. Naruto kept his eyes closed, but saw everything clearly in the wind of his mind's eye. He saw the first blossoms of smoke rise into the air, watched the trails snake away as the fire grew, and observed the steady decay of the remains within.

The fire chipped away at what was left, but without the forceful violence of a predator's teeth, rending meat from a corpse. The fire's heat softened flesh, and removed it piece by piece as the heat grew with every passing moment. Like water and waves on the shore, the tide of fire of which Enma told swept what remained of this mortal shell away like ashen sand, little flecks of black rising in the pillar of flame to swirl away as embers.

Naruto hummed almost inaudibly to himself and to Kaze when he heard the whisper of wind from the trees against his ear. He nodded slowly at the truth unknown to those around him yet suddenly known to him: he was reminded of water when he looked at fire because they were connected.

He had always known that, at a baser, instinctive level. It was a deep, primal assumption to him. While his world was wind, it was occupied by other things. He did not know them intimately, but he knew of them enough to see and hear what others could not. And he heard their connection.

_The link between the turning tide and the fading flame._

They... had yet to come, yet to wake. But they would, he hoped.

And, perhaps without even knowing it, the Sarutobi prayed for the same thing.

Seeing the embers rise up and scatter on the wind, Naruto could see why they found hope in the flames.

* * *

The fire crackled in the cave. The smell of smoked skin and seared meat was strong. The boar was coming along nicely.

"Something satisfying about cooking what you caught yourself, isn't there, Sasuke?"

Sasuke grunted his affirmation. Kakashi was right.

Indeed, there was a kind of instinctual pride in seeing a hunted prize turning over an open flame, something deeply satisfying in the image that Sasuke was vaguely aware of between the growls of his stomach and the returning heat in his cold, cold hands.

Kakashi was right. _Again_. He hated it when Kakashi was right. He also hated when Kakashi was bound to profit off of his work.

It had taken him a _very_ long time to find one. And then he had had to drag it through the snow, right back to a cave full of the smug, smiling eye of his sensei, and the dwindling scents of a cooked meal and a pack of hounds he had just missed. Either Kakashi was the most coincidence-prone man in existence, or his teacher was just an ass who enjoyed tormenting him to no end.

Of course, the fire had been roaring when he'd dragged the boar in. Then when he'd looked away for one second, the fire was dead, the ashes were scattered, and the remaining dry wood was drenched and already freezing.

He had his answer.

"I'll take that as a yes." Kakashi's closed eye curved into a crescent.

Sasuke grunted again. Kakashi was an ass, but he was an ass with a plan.

Lessons could be taught in many, many ways. The idea of the Academy, where learning was structured and curtailed to subjects and intertwined and coalesced in examinations, came to mind. It was slow, perhaps, but ultimately thorough. It was a foundation, but he needed more than a foundation and he needed it quickly.

He remembered the strangely cheery glint in Kakashi's eye when they had first arrived. _"Easiest way to learn is when your life is on the line."_

And then Kakashi began pelting him with kunai and shuriken and set a pack of dogs after him for the next six hours in a snowy wilderness he barely knew how to navigate. That was just the first day.

Survival training at the Academy was to spend a few days without comfort, looking for clean water, foraging for food, camping in the forest, rubbing sticks for a fire. They didn't simulate the conditions of hostile territory until the third year.

But that wouldn't compare in the slightest to being hunted like an animal in an icy wasteland_._

The first days had been the hardest, hungry and cold, equipped but unused to heavier, clumsy clothing that made it difficult to do anything. But the strangest part was the solitude. His electrical sense alerted him to life – the spark everything carried deep inside – but he did not feel anything as he wandered the frozen forests and the snowy plains beyond Raikou's murmurs. It was empty, desolate.

And then, when the unending quiet was almost getting to him, Kakashi would remind him of the hunt with brandished steel and bared fangs. The pursuits were sporadic, unpredictable, and dangerous, more than enough to leave him bruised and bleeding. The fact they came unannounced, sometimes no more than a few minutes apart, didn't help the paranoia.

Between hunting for sparse food, drinking snowmelt, getting so little sleep, having his shelter burnt to cinders or drowned in frozen-over water or blocked by a barrier of earth he could not break, he was always on the move, always running, always hiding, always fighting. He was so tired but still in so much danger of broken bones and starvation, bleeding stilled only by the cold he felt clinging to him day after day.

That was the first month.

It had been... _it had been_...

Come to think of it, he didn't know. He'd stopped counting some time ago and never started again.

"Kakashi."

Across the dry dirt and the crackling flames, Kakashi didn't look up from his book, the orange thing he kept in one of the chest pockets of his jounin jacket. "Question, Sasuke?"

"How long have we been here?"

Kakashi turned a page. "A few months. Why the sudden interest?"

"Just remembering when I got here," Sasuke said. There was no reason in hiding the obvious things from Kakashi. As soon as his teacher caught wind of something obscured, he was like a dog with a bone. Or Bull after him. Or Pakkun leading the charge on his scent trail, with Bisuke, Shiba, Urushi, Akino, Uuhei and Guruko trailing behind him when they all tried to run him down on the plains. Of course, the only times in that first month he managed to keep properly ahead was in the trees, and that'd only been twice.

Sasuke shook his head. The memory of those first chases, when the blood was pumping and he hadn't wanted teeth in his ankles and through his pant leg, was still quite vivid.

"Those were the days," Kakashi said, a smug smile in his voice. "I mean, I can still remember when all you could do was run away. Oh, where did that little scamp go?"

"He froze to death in the first week," Sasuke snorted.

Kakashi chuckled. "True. At least this one knows how his chakra works."

"Hey," Sasuke grumbled, "I only tried a Katon jutsu out of reflex."

"And I'm sure that wonderfully stunned look on your face was reflex, too."

"Then why did you take out your damn Sharingan to memorise it if it was going to show up again?"

Kakashi gave a mock gasp, a hand over his masked mouth. "I take offence at that. I would never use it for such childish things."

"You showed me a photo-real sketch you made of it after you punched me into the snow."

Kakashi's exposed eye flipped into a smile. "I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Sure," Sasuke said, "just like you didn't know anything about Itachi."

He blinked.

_What... what did I just say?_

Kakashi's eye snapped open, and the book was gone. "Sasuke."

Suddenly his face felt tight, his muscles tense as he sat sharply upright, his eyes set uncomfortably firm in his skull.

_What am I doing?_

"We talked about this," Kakashi said slowly, carefully, like he was stepping through snow mined with explosive tags. He knew what that was like, the caution, the paranoia, and the danger. "I didn't know what was going to happen. None of us did. It was just –"

"Just what?"

He didn't know why he was swiftly on his feet, why he felt so on edge as he stared through the fire, why words kept coming.

"Just what, Kakashi? A tragedy? A disaster? A mistake?"

"Sasuke, it was –"

"An accident? Murder? A massacre? Genocide?"

"Sasuke, you need to –"

_"NO!"_

Thunder rang in his ears, and Kakashi covered his.

"You can't answer me, because what the hell do you know about it?"

Hands drifting down, Kakashi said nothing, did nothing as the fire crackled, as Sasuke stared through the embers with rage from nowhere, directed at the only other thing in the cave that wasn't a roasting corpse.

"What have you had taken from you?"

He knew, somewhere distant at the back of his head and far from his anger, that something had been taken from Kakashi, but the words still spilled from his mouth in a toxic rush.

"What's kept you awake night after night? What have you had replay in your head day after day whether you wanted to or not?"

He clenched his fists, sparks leaking from the gaps in his fingers like water, and his anger refused to subside as he spat words into the fire.

"What's given you nightmares for weeks on end? What's made you wake up covered in sweat and breathless, so scared that the blood you saw was still there? What made you realise when you see it in your dreams, in your every waking thought again and again that you can't do a damn thing to stop it?"

His fists uncurled, his muscles uncoiled, the sparks stopped flowing, and he was so _tired_. His breath was suddenly short and shallow and his last stupid, inane, noxious words came out in rasps.

"What made you realise... you weren't strong enough?"

And then he felt the anger go as quickly as it had come, replaced by an overwhelming desire to _leave_.

"I... I..."

He couldn't think of anything to say, couldn't think of anything to do, to justify, to defend, to try and make sense of any of this. So he did what the lessons of survival Kakashi had pounded into his thick skull told him to: retreat and reassess.

He grabbed hold of his chakra, slowed the world to a crawl, and _ran_.

* * *

The fire roared high; the crowd roared higher.

Drums were beating, primates were raging, and Naruto was somewhere in the middle of all the noise, slipping through the gaps in the thrashing mess of flying limbs and fur that surrounded him, trying to find something to eat between all the insanity of Sarutobi celebration. He'd been caught up in a festival for the passing of the seasons the first time he came to the village in the trees, but that had nothing on a festival for _life_.

Death was a time for reflection. That didn't mean it had to be solemn. They reflected with noise, with food, with fire, with music, with dancing, with all the things they loved in the world that the one who had passed had loved just as much.

It was tradition not to mention the name aloud on the first day, but the uproar in the village screamed to the highest heavens everything about the man save that one thing, a cry of love for the departed.

It really was a beautiful thing. He just wished it wasn't so damn _loud_.

Hands over his ears for the umpteenth time as a keening shriek from a particularly loud baboon cut the air, Naruto hopped from clear space to clear space, making headway in openings that existed only for a moment before destruction and rebirth took place a moment later. The flailing arms and legs of the crowd made passage difficult, but it was either that or jump from head to head to escape the crowd.

Naruto didn't like being impolite.

It took him a few good minutes, but Naruto finally made it to a table laden with fruits and meats and other things gathered from the forest. Food was abundant in the trees; a true bounty if one knew where to look. Luckily – or unluckily, perhaps – he had come to know the forest well, so he recognised some of what was on offer. Of course, a few of the more exotic things escaped him.

For instance, he really didn't understand how a fruit that naturally secreted poison to the touch was supposed to be eaten, or even if it _was_ supposed to be eaten. That just seemed like plain idiocy to him.

But he ignored it, snagged a few things to fill his begrudging belly, and searched out a spot to sit for awhile. The meeting place was packed, but it truly was immense. High at the furthest row, he found some space and sat.

"Naruto, there you are."

And he somehow managed to find himself next to Asuma-sensei.

"Greetings, young one."

And he managed to find himself next to Enma, too. That was odd.

He looked over to the two of them, Asuma leaning with hands on knees, Enma straight-backed and tall, and smiled slightly. "Hello, Enma-sama, Asuma-sensei. This is quite a celebration. Are funerals always like this?"

Asuma looked ready to say something, but Enma's deep, powerful voice cut through.

"Similar, yes, but they are rarely so extensive. It is not often one of the clan passes in his sleep, so it is important that we mark this occasion in our minds. Few pass from this world with peace."

_Slicing winds tore at the sky. Lightning clawed at the ground. The earth shook, and they knew no more as the heavens abandoned them._

"Yeah," Naruto said. From the ones his mistake some time ago cost, he knew that to be true.

A hand grasped his shoulder, and Asuma-sensei gave him a wistful smile. "It's alright, kid."

"My apologies, young one," Enma said, eyes closed and head inclined towards him. "I spoke without consideration."

He'd spoken with Enma before, when he had visited the village with Asuma-sensei after several weeks of surviving the forest, for rest and slightly more formal education than his teacher's love of ambushes and paranoia-inducing attacks that taught him how to go without sleep for days at a time and traverse the unpredictable environs of a largely vertical landscape without the use – or a need – of conventional chakra. He'd spoken somewhat of the event that had resulted in his arrival in Enma's lands, in the ensuing tragedy he had played no small part in. The Monkey King had shared his condolences.

"No need, Enma-sama," Naruto said with a bright grin. "I'm fine, but maybe you could answer a question for me."

"Oh?" One of Enma's immense eyebrows quirked upwards, and his gaze slid to Asuma. "And Saru's youngster was unable to help you?"

"Enma-sama," Asuma groaned. "I'm not twelve anymore."

Enma laughed. "Ha! You'll always be a youngster to me, my boy. I do have a century-and-a-half on you."

"Well, that just about answer my question," Naruto smiled. "I just wanted to know how old you are."

"Why the curiosity?" Asuma asked, after he'd finished grumbling.

Naruto looked up slightly, tilted his head as he considered the words he needed, drawing a few from the deeper recesses, along with some concepts from... _somewhere_. "Well, K – I mean, _he_ was in his nineties when he passed, and he went in his sleep from natural causes. But he was a Sarutobi. If Enma-sama is already significantly older, it means he and the rest of the Sarutobi tribe are strong down to the biological level, probably because they evolved in such a harsh environment. Just because of that difference, it means the Sarutobi clan didn't come together with the tribe until sometime after that development. The timeline of your history I've seen is lengthy compared to the human lifespan, but it only begins just before the clan met with the tribe. Again, it indicates that the changes for the tribe took many more centuries than both have coexisted for."

Asuma stared at him.

"What?" he said, "I find this stuff interesting."

Asuma blinked a few times. "Well, no shit, but still. I didn't realise you knew anything about that sort of stuff. Or why you'd be interested in it. Or why you even know anything about that to begin with."

"We do have places of learning here, Asuma," Enma said, stroking his chin thoughtfully.

That was true. They had books, and he had spent time reading when he wasn't in Asuma-sensei's little slice of pre-existing hell, but that wasn't the main source of his knowledge.

"Yeah, I just didn't realise how much time I'd been giving you," Asuma chuckled. "If you had so much time to read, I probably could've kept you in the forest for a bit longer."

Naruto groaned. "I can always trust you to threaten me when I need it, sensei."

"I try, Naruto," Asuma grinned broadly.

Enma cleared his throat. "As interesting as your banter is, young ones, Naruto does raise a point I had not considered about the origins of our clan. You would do well to commend him on such extensive thought at such a tender age, Asuma. The thoughts of youth are long thoughts, but few so young are capable of finding clarity therein."

"Right," Asuma nodded slowly. "Good job, kid, on the, uh, thinking."

Naruto grinned at his sensei. "Thanks."

Conversations quickly resumed between the leader of the tribe and the heir to the clan, on matters concerning preparations for departures, on the state of the Sarutobi in Konoha, on the conditions of the forest as a whole, and he soon found himself lost in thought, pondering the complexities of his own condition.

His thoughts turned to the funeral, the pyre that Asuma-sensei had set alight, the send-off they gave their blessed elder.

He remembered the man, few and fleeting as those memories were. He was old, he was wise, he was kind, and he died of natural causes. His life had reached its natural end, and life left him in his sleep. He had departed from this mortal coil in peace.

It was a far rarer thing than he had first thought.

Of the moments that stood strong among this village bound strongly to the trees, the forest, the ancient roots that spread into basalt and igneous earth for seeming eternity, his stories of war stooped weak yet powerful, held fragile and tragic yet brutal and potent amid Naruto's gathered recollections. They were there simply because war had been there when nothing else was, and it dominated the younger years of the man's life.

The First, the Second, and the first months of the Third – he had seen much. While he had been able to describe grand battles, the continuous skirmishes clashes of hundreds in ruined fields of fire and blood, and the clashes between the titans of the shinobi world, duels between two with the power of armies that escalated into a conflict beyond the scope of mere words, the old man spoke of these without the reverent tone Naruto had heard from teachers and instructors in Konoha, the hushed quality of voices when they talked of these blooded deeds as magnificent, as awesome, hallowed things, and even the slight one-sided essence of the text in the books they read. The old man did not talk of war like he missed it. He sounded as if he was glad to be rid of it. And Naruto could understand that even a little, thanks to the old man's words on the nature of the battlefield.

_At the asking of his question, his sudden smile was sad and knowing, yet wishing it was neither. "It's hell, kid. And hell never leaves you."_

Those words stuck with him, and carried over to dreams... or perhaps something that was not.

In sleep, when he had slumbered in the village in the branches or on a bed of loose leaves with rest held so weakly by his tired hands, he had wandered his way back... _there_.

He did not quite have a name for it, not yet at least. At first, there had been so little within to name it for save ink. But he did not think that was enough to warrant a proper name. So, when he found himself in that dream of written, painted darkness once more, he had no real name for it. That was the case, until he reached out his hand and felt something beneath his fingers. He was no longer so detached from his body, his sense of self no longer so twisted and distorted. He was still him.

In the darkness, his eyes could make out vague things in the shadows, and his ears told him there was a space around him. There was sight and there was sound, but it was not quite what he knew. Time was still not what he knew, so space bent to its whims.

The space around him was a room with definable limits, no matter how massive in size it truly was. It was made of ancient stone. But it did not feel like stone, not in the way that mattered. To his touch, it was cold but not, hard but not. It resembled stone in all ways until he pushed, when he felt a give that stone did not have. It was as if the first layer was made of earth, and the rest was merely a falsehood, a convincing deception made for a sense of comfort.

And, after that first realisation, he woke up, shoved the dream to the back of his conscious mind, and blew the giant panther about to swallow his head away with a furious fist of wind.

In nights of dreams that followed, he learnt more about the space still shrouded in murky night, enough to give it a name, or a few he had yet to decide on.

The Study, the Library, the Archive, the Hall, the Nexus – all these were contenders for this place's name. A study for its namesake action, a library for its replete stores of knowledge, an archive for its sheer extent of record, a hall for its shape, and a nexus for the timeless connections that spanned untold millennia.

All these things were true. In this hall, there were the shapes of shelves, things made of wood that was not wood in the same way that the stone was not stone. They were countless in number. The scrolls resting upon them were even more numerous. Stories, tales and journeys were stored in them. Memories were stored in them.

He had wandered through the library aisles stacked to forever with recollection. He had unfurled scrolls, and began to read, began to look, began to watch. Some were language, some were image, and some were motion. All were stories, tales and journeys. All were memory.

He had learnt words, terms, concepts from these memories. It was where he learnt of biology and electricity and evolution and matter and the way wind functioned. It was where he learnt how to move properly with his altered chakra, where he learnt to breathe efficiently, and where he learnt to orient himself in the world. It was where he learnt to understand _more_.

But when the old man had told him stories of war, its horror and its torment, the next scroll he wrested from the shelves with ease was not one to read, not one to gaze at, not one to watch. Instead, it was one to _live_.

_The breeze was sour, stale, rotten with the stink of air about to boil over with blood and shit, fire and gore. The craters were filled with bodies just the same, a bubbling soup of corpses sitting stagnant in the midday sun, harsh light knifing its way through the heavy smoke rolling above like sickly clouds. There were missing limbs, there was burning flesh, and there were bodies opened to the cruel blue sky from neck to navel in an ocean's scarlet tide. Innards were spilling over from the cauldrons of ravaged cavities, ribs not broken but splintered, to let intestines drop and stomachs churn. Those spires and towers of bone not felled by battle or cracked by conflict stood tall from their shattered cages, the jagged peaks of mountains of decaying carcasses already piling high. They remained silent and sentinel, white watchers in a red river._

_Heartless blue and black above, rotting red far below, this was the aftermath. The smell, the sight, the stifling sound of silence – this was what was left._

_He wondered how much worse it had been _during_._

_But these were all his thoughts, the thoughts of _Naruto_. The eyes through which he saw were not his own, nor were the words that came through a different mouth, the feelings that were provoked in a different mind, and the connection he felt to the man he saw as his vision panned across the devastated landscape._

_A feeling of brotherhood he didn't know stirred in an unknown breast and an unknown heart when he laid eyes on this person, a tall, lithe panther of a man stood tiredly, with long hair of sand and brown falling to his shoulders, and eyes that glowed with an inner light – the right a ghostly blue-white, the left a rich mixture of metallic gold and bronze._

_The disproportionate joy that rushed through him at the sight of this man was tempered by the blood he kneeled in – the blood he knew they had both spilled without remorse, without even a hint of regret at the storm they had transformed into at the sight of those who _knew_, at the sight of those who _needed_ to be erased, the last fleeting remnants of an entire era_ _they had_ killed with their own hands_._

_The feeling of something truly _wrong_ pulled at Naruto's thoughts. He should not have been there, witnessing this moment. He should not have even touched it._

_But he was there._

_The words that followed between them were short and sharp, not a conversation one would see between typical friends. It seemed harsh and forceful, lined with brutal undertones. Naruto could hear their words but he could not understand them. The language they spoke was different._

_But he could _feel_ them._

_The feelings that shot between them were layered, complex, steeped in the riddles and mysteries of the lives they had led and the lives that had come before theirs. Yet their feelings were invisible things, transferred not through their words and their tones, their body language or even their eye contact. It was shared through the energy – huge, colossal and overwhelming – he could feel thrumming about them, an understanding of each other innate to their very existences._

_But it was hard to track._

_He missed things, things lost to the flow ever-present, existing even when they ceased making sound beyond breath. There was an entire discussion of a world's gilded history he had only caught the tail end of, when they both seethed silently, caught for a moment in a great rictus of anger and despair. The world around them raged with cutting winds marked with red, and the smoke-stained midday sky flashed with lightning from nowhere._

_He only caught one definite, solid concept, something that stopped his thoughts, that made the living memory waver and dissolve into patchwork grey, that made something inside him _scream_ with the _wrongness_ of it all._

_The_ _Cleansing_.

It shook him back into reality. Naruto blinked, fear forgotten. But then he looked, and felt something change.

Drawn back to the present, he could not tear his eyes from something suddenly so _different_.

In the centre of celebration of life and memory, an unceremonious ceremony of raucous festivity, the flames of the feast were no longer playful. They no longer danced; they no longer cast stretching arms of brilliant twilight into the branches, into the falling leaves; they no longer spread high in pride and power. He saw them differently now.

The noise of living things drained away, and the flames before him seemed to darken and grow.

The fire did not play or dance or cast or spread from its pit of shadowed clay. It crawled, it twisted, it reached, and it writhed from pits far deeper. These were pits of charred dirt, blackened flesh and simmering, smoking blood. Fire gathered in these places, coiling tight like blazing snakes in craters from long lost battlefields that sank back into the earth. But while the battlefields sank, the flames consumed.

Murky embers, hungry and wanting, licked at the leaves, flickering upwards like forked tongues tasting the air. Smoke grew thicker, denser, and darker as the flames became the same, a red shadow looming in the branches. And that red shadow exploded into growth, growing and growing until it could grow no more, until the leaves were ash and the mountainous trees were black bones. Fire roared into the night, drowning the noise of joyful remembrance in the raging thunder of all-consuming inferno.

Then the trees were gone, the people were gone, and the wasteland of war returned. The forest had said its final goodbyes, the tribe had vanished into history unrecalled, and the terrain of tortured plains unfolded for all left with eyes to see, a last terrible testament weaved in worldly tapestry.

The tapestry was wounded, and those gaping wounds bled.

_"We killed the world once. I do not wish to do so again."_

Naruto blinked once more. Everything... was still intact, in place, existing as it was.

The fire blazed with light, not with darkness. The forest stood tall with ancient pride, not as corpses. The people moved with celebration, not with starvation. Asuma and Enma still talked, saying something about leaving in the next few days, a journey on which his sensei would soon take him.

Naruto looked skyward, and he felt a change in the wind as Kaze whispered a new word.

_Shard._


	12. 11

_From the Zenith_

_Scroll 295; Memory N309_

_Category: Shards_

_Creation was not clean._

_The infinite has never played well with finite boundaries. The World, ultimately, is finite. To create, the Five sacrificed portions of their infinity. This does not make sense, but it is the method by which creation occurred. It was inefficient._

_The Five broke their crystalline wholes, and from them descended the glittering fragments that would become the seeds for all creation. Not all took root. Those that did not became… restless. These restless fragments became Shards._

_They gazed upon the World, and saw life. In ways, they imitate it, each as a different sort. Some attempted flesh and blood, while some attempted the functions of their progenitors. Some attempted to mirror what they saw, while some rejected it._

_They inhabit the material World, the same as any living being. But they do not belong. Together, they possess only one desire: to go home._

_The simplest route is through the Chosen._

_All who remember, take heed. No matter how broken they appear, they must not be disregarded. Even a broken knife may cut._

* * *

"Well, I know what direction he headed in," Pakkun said as he walked back to the mouth of the cave, barely leaving prints of his paws tracking through the snow. The little brown-furred pug was incredibly light on his feet, even without the use of chakra.

Kakashi stood idle, leant against the lip of the rock wall, book in hand but simply scanning the well-worn pages with an eye rather than reading. The words filtered in as they always did, but they did not truly register.

"Then why haven't you told me yet?" he asked.

Pakkun snorted and headed inside.

The fire was still blazing; the boar was done roasting, but Kakashi didn't feel like eating as he stood over Pakkun as he lay before the flames.

"It'll be easier if we wait," the dog said.

Kakashi shook his head. "None of this is easy, Pakkun."

"I know," the dog agreed. "But waiting _will_ make it easier."

Kakashi sat down beside his dog, idly scratching behind his neck with his free hand. "I don't like it."

He didn't. He _really_ didn't. It was too familiar, too close to home. When he looked at Sasuke, he saw a lot of things, so many reminders of loss and mistakes. So many names floated in his head, so many gone but never forgotten, so many names he _couldn't_ forget, no matter how hard he tried. So when he saw the anger, the rage from someone who had lost so much taken out on someone they both knew could not do anything to fix it, he was reminded so very much of a boy who took the shinobi code as gospel, who took rules before comrades, who took the mission before friends.

He didn't want to see Sasuke as broken as he had been, as he still really was.

"I don't like it either, but we should just let the pup tire himself out, Kakashi," Pakkun said from his lazy rest in front of the fire. "He'll be easier to deal with once he's gone for a run."

_A run? _Kakashi almost felt like laughing. If Sasuke's speed was anything to go by, he'd have already covered thirty kilometres in the past three minutes alone.

He gave the boy trouble and torment, but that was his job. It was hard to tell if it was purely by the extremes of his surroundings and his treatment or some incredible aptitude for adaptation, but Sasuke had been blowing his expectations out of the water. He never said, but the boy truly was skilled. He had such a disadvantage, being restricted to pure lightning chakra, but he turned it to his advantage by developing an ability to boost his speed and agility to levels easily on par with some jounin. He lacked the strength to match, and it was possible to interrupt his movements with catastrophic results, but he had come so far in just a few months.

He settled in beside Pakkun, and watched the fire burn.

He was proud of him already.

Sasuke needed to know that, and that he really did understand what it was like to be afraid.

* * *

_Fear – it makes sense_, Sasuke considered as he leant into his knees, his breathing strained, his muscles burning, the cave a world away and mountains piercing the clouds before him. Lightning carried him far.

And then, with clarity and distance gained, he began to think.

To feel fear was to feel a need to survive, and it was a natural instinct rooted in all life, overcome only by the brave or the stupid and sometimes both. There were many kinds of fear, irrational and otherwise, but there was one above that trumped all fears: a fear of something _greater_.

Prey feared predators; men feared gods – each was a fear of what was greater, what was more than either.

That was the reason _everything_ feared lightning.

But it was also the reason he never even tried to explain what he was to Kakashi, because that ancient, primal fear of a night sky exploding into day and a wall of noise that made the earth shake manifested differently in people now than it had in those far-flung ages lost to living memory: rejection. It came as a refusal, a denial of an idea or a concept. It was why people so often struggled to believe in things like religions, in gods, in anything greater than man. It was all just an expression of a fear as old as life itself, only a bit more elaborate than running away with a tail tucked between legs thanks to the passage of time.

But he didn't want that. He didn't want any of that. He realised that now when he realised where fear had come from, what had made it, what had caused it, and what had felt it. Fear came from the elements, a creation of theirs instilled in all creation, all of which they caused. And, in the end, it was life that felt it.

Among the elements, it was lightning that defined him, a force truly worthy of fear. Yet he didn't want that.

After all, who would want rejection? Who would want fear?

But his questions had already been answered in dreams, visions he chose to see in a world of ink that had decided to lighten, enough that he could see where he stood in an almost limitless space lined with shelves and scrolls since time immemorial. Each was a memory, some of them many memories, and many of those were of far-flung ages lost to the memory of the living.

In a story of a fall from lightning's grace, he found his answer.

The answer was someone who sought power. The answer was someone who used power. The answer was someone consumed by it. The answer was a tyrant, a monster, a coward, a false prophet, a falser deity, the heathen chosen who had crowned himself a king and _dared to desecrate holiest lightning!_

He remembered distinctly the righteous anger that had awoke in him at that discovery.

The answer was someone who had received the greatest gift that could be given, abused it, revelled in it, and was struck down at the height of his cruelty, when his power was stripped away by the very force that had gifted it to him so freely. His gilded kingdom built on a foundation of lies and fear fell; his wretched name was struck from the stones of history; his enslaved people spread themselves free, and he was forgotten to all who lived in this world.

When he had put the scroll down, after he had felt the pain of that tortured, swallowed life, its falsehoods, its self-deceptions and its crippling emotions of an ultimate downfall, Sasuke realised he wanted none of what greatest fear could lead to.

He hated Kakashi. Or, he did sometimes, when he was cruel, or harsh, or did something that angered him, something that upset him, something that bothered him.

At first, he hadn't wanted anything to do with him. Then, he became obsessed with meeting his ridiculous expectations, surpassing them just so he could rub success in his teacher's smug face. And then, when he snapped, when something inside him broke and he remembered what happened that night through a different lens – one human and flawed, cracked like glass and untouched by lightning – he didn't want Kakashi to reject him, one that embodied lightning, one that embodied something truly worthy of fear.

But as much as he made it seem like it was about whom should be afraid, the truth was simpler than that.

It was _his_ fear. _He _was afraid. _He_ didn't want to be rejected. _He_ didn't want to be feared. _He_ didn't want to remember.

He couldn't help the fact that he did, couldn't help the fact that he couldn't truly forget. Lightning stopped it from swallowing him whole, but that didn't mean it hadn't gotten pieces. So much blood would not come out so easily, but Raikou's all-consuming light made it fade. In the life he led from day to day, lightning flowed and flourished freely. It kept him stable, breathing, feeling. It kept him living.

But to keep living was to keep feeling the pain, the loss, the guilt, the ghosts that woke him in the night, the freezing sweat that drenched him in his sleep, the bile that burned his throat when he opened his eyes so very suddenly to the light of day. It had faded as time had passed, but it was all still there, refusing to go, refusing to leave him in peace, refusing to stop the terrors in the dark that denied him rest, the bloody shapes cast on black walls, the drowned dead in the drowned streets, the storm that had carried his life away with sleet and steel, the glowing eyes that pierced through the –

"Sasuke."

He opened his eyes, took in the world, and his burning thoughts cooled in the cold. In the back of his head, he had felt Kakashi's presence some distance away, but he couldn't be bothered to run anymore. He'd done so much of that already.

Sasuke turned, adjusting his stance in the snow to face his teacher, to open his mouth and... just say something. But he didn't know what. What could he say? Could he try and explain what his brother had done, to him and his clan? Could he even begin to explain the earth-shattering bolt of lightning that had ripped apart land but left him changed, blessed even?

Could he explain why he ran, why he shouted, why he raged, why he was so –?

"It's okay."

Sasuke looked up from his feet.

Kakashi looked away into the distance, past him and the mountains both. His gaze was carried out beyond the snow, beyond the ice, beyond the sky. In his dreams of ink and memory, Sasuke had seen that kind of a glint in other eyes. But there was something different about seeing it for himself, with his own mind and his own scorched heart – the strings that pulled tight in his chest.

Beyond the horizon of these frozen wastes, Kakashi looked to the past.

And then he started to speak.

"When I was just a little older than you," Kakashi began, his words hanging still in the air for a long, anxious moment, "my father committed suicide."

Even in the silence of the snow, Sasuke found a way to grow quieter as his breath caught and pooled in the shallows of his throat.

Kakashi continued. "He disembowelled himself with his tanto. I found his body in the living room."

He didn't know what to say, if there was anything to say to that. So he didn't. He just listened to his teacher's words, carrying far on the snowy plains below the peaks.

"A mission failed, and a lot of people died because my father was faced with a choice: complete the mission and let his team die, or disregard it, and save them."

Kakashi looked away from the hidden horizon, and down to the white at his feet. "He chose to save them, but the shinobi of Konoha, and even some of his own friends – the teammates he gave up everything for – shamed him for it, because his failure coincided with the outbreak of the Third Shinobi World War. I don't know if the mission failure caused the war, or caused the village's involvement in it, but that didn't matter. He still ended his life."

Kakashi looked at him directly, an eye meeting his for the first time since a moment that seemed to last forever.

"It hurt," he said. "It hurt so much. I wanted the pain to stop, so I did the only thing I knew how to do: I fought."

It was a war, Sasuke knew. It was a war that started more than twenty years ago. It was a war that had begun when Kakashi was younger than he was now. And Kakashi had fought in it.

"I threw myself into shinobi life," he went on, "I abided strictly by the rules my father broke, and I fought. Then I lost a teammate I came to treasure, all because I didn't want to do what my father did.

"I kept losing things over the years – my surviving teammate, my sensei, my friends. I made so many mistakes trying to avoid the ones my father made. I tried to end it all by tossing myself into missions again and again. If I was going out, I was going out for Konoha. But I survived, and I'm still here."

Then the direct gaze that had held his for what felt like eternity changed. There was a shift from an account of facts and pain to something quieter, a gentleness that fitted Kakashi awkwardly. But he wore it regardless, wore it almost proudly as Kakashi looked at him with something he remembered as kindness.

"I'm going to tell you something it took me too many years to learn – there is no right answer. Your pain is your own, and it will never really leave you. But you need to learn to live in spite of it. Find a reason to keep going. You do that, and then you'll be strong enough.

"That's what real shinobi do, after all. We don't gain power just for the sake of it. We do it so we can survive." Kakashi's eye closed into a crescent. "And isn't that what I've taught you since day one?"

He... was right.

He'd learnt to survive, and survival had taught him control.

It was not perfect. In fact, it was pathetic in some regards. He could not throw lightning bolts at will; he could not generate storms from thin air; he could not even effectively or efficiently externalise his own power with anything remotely like reliability, ranging from a handful of sparks leaking from his hands to a strike that sheared a cliff from the mountainside and buried them beneath five metres of snow.

But within him... it was beautiful.

He had such control, such power, such freedom within the confines of his own body. His ability to bend his view of the world with raw, electric speed was merely an expression of such things.

He had a firm grasp on the lightning within. Now he simply had to catch the lightning without.

It would take one hell of a bottle to keep a lid on _that_.

Kakashi had taken him to the foot of that path, and tossed him down the hill. He'd made his life hell. He'd made his body bruise and bleed, vomit and ache, starve and retch. He'd made him hate him, rage at him, shout at him, run from him. He'd made him understand that he wasn't the only one who was afraid.

He'd made him stronger.

Sasuke looked down. "Thanks... sensei."

Kakashi blinked. "You know, I think that's the first time you've called me that."

"You're right," he nodded. "I didn't like calling you that."

Kakashi snorted, and the solemn mood was broken.

"Come on," his teacher said. "It'll be getting dark soon, and we need to be ready to head out in the –"

_Shard._

Sasuke was already looking up when thunder cut Kakashi's sentence in two, the air shuddering under the weight of the sound. He began to stretch his electrical sense beyond himself, tracing the snow, the trees that shuddered in a wave as the echo spread, and up into the mountain where –

"AH!"

Heat surged in through his eyes, scorching his mind, burning his spine, making his scar ache with a phantom pain as real as the snow between his fingers as something _woke_.

"Sasuke!"

And then he was hurled across the plain, the grey sky twisting and turning as a hand gripped his arm and dragged him away from thunder that fell closer and closer to icy earth.

The motion that made the liquid in his ears slosh about and the world spin wildly settled for just a moment, enough for him to see the sea of white and mist coming at them from the mountain slope, arms of snow leaping from the waves as the rumble grew to an earthquake's deafening heights.

"Run!" Kakashi's voice slashed through the glacial roar, his grip loosening just enough for Sasuke to regain his feet, stoke the coils of lightning that crackled inside, and blaze across the snow.

Kakashi pointed as he began to run at a jounin's pace, enough to match his own frantic stride. "To the trees!"

He pounded across the field, teacher at his heels, an ocean thrashing down from the broken mountainside, tendrils like spears reaching for the clouds as the avalanche shattered and reformed, splitting and rejoining, smashing against it itself and making something new but no less crushing in every solitary millisecond he spared to look over his shoulder.

The pines loomed larger and larger, white-dusted layers of leaves beckoning them to something resembling safety. But they were running downhill.

The roar grew and grew in his ears, the stilted and spurred nature of his hearing when lightning took hold of his perceptions defied in favour of the natural order, his faint trail of impressions in the snow swallowed by the rolling disaster splintering at his heels. And then the wall of rock-hard ice was reaching for the sky, eating and leeching the clouds from the heavens faster than even he could see.

Another sound like a voice touched at his senses, familiar and loud and frenzied. Kakashi pointed up.

Sasuke braced his legs, felt the snow racing underfoot gather beneath him, felt the lightning coiled in him like a snake ready to lunge, and he leapt, just as the darkness massing behind came crashing down.

The trees flew past and the sky grew larger, a hand latched onto his, and he was turned in mid-air by his momentum as Kakashi anchored them both to a pine's trunk, right as the avalanche reached the trees.

Snow and ice shattered against the first of the trees, waves of purest white pockmarked with boulders of grey and blue spreading wide and far across the forest before it broke the ranks and breached the gaps. Sasuke smashed into his sensei's side, Kakashi holding them both steady as the tree began to lean violently, as if stormy wind urged it to snap and water and whitewash made it a reality. The trees all around were pushed against, a mountain of broken ice pressing upon them until the first one gave with a thunderous _crack_ that split the deafening roar of the snowy ocean asunder.

Splinters took to the air and whole trees followed in the stream with more lightless thunder, the avalanche pulling and tugging everything in its path from its place in the ground.

Then he felt the wood beneath them both buckle and bend, right before Kakashi grabbed his arm, swung around him around bodily, and heaved him into the sky. The roots gave and the tree was snapped like a dry twig below them.

Momentum sent him sailing above the racing stream of white, to another tree top that almost broke on contact, barely enough time for the lightning to surge and the world to slow, a pulse of energy through his feet sending him careening into the next bending pine. He caught the pine's tip with his gloved hand, swung left and funnelled his motion forward, to another tree and the one after and the one after that. He burnt through the treetops as they bent and broke, warped and splintered as the avalanche continued bearing down on him, the world still slowed and stilted, his perspective distorted and shifted to the vibrant place he always carried with him, the hidden beauty he knew but no one else did.

Even with the adrenaline and the fear of flowing disaster, of unending catastrophe that swam before his eyes, the avalanche was wondrous in its own terrifying, untainted way.

It finally settled after leap after leap, his energy dwindling from constant use, pulse after pulse carried through his muscles to carry him from snapping pine to snapping pine. The monumental bellow of the icy flood finally began to dwindle, leaving behind a rising cloud of mist and echoes that carried on forever in the snowy wastes.

And then Sasuke found himself on his back, his head pounding, his breath wild, cooling in the powder. He was there for a few moments, resting, preparing, silent, wary of anything more that could fall from the mountain.

But there was nothing but that presence resting above in the –

"AH!"

Burning pain consumed his arm, and Sasuke stared at the sky, stared at a growing light in the clouds that he knew did not harbour a true storm.

"Sasuke."

Known hands grasped him, and Kakashi appeared above him, silver hair covered in white dust, single eye wide with alarm.

He could feel it growing, massing, trembling, and waiting far above, sitting in the clouds like Raikou had on that day, but _less_. It was far, far less than that strike of holy light, but everything was less than infinity. Even without all the power that could ever exist in its grasp, it was terrifying, overpowering, enough to reduce anything living to dust at its moment of greatest strength.

And Kakashi was still here.

His arm burning and his eyes aching, his scar scorching and his retinas simmering, he stood, half-sinking in the loose snow.

"Sasuke, what are you doing?"

Light in the sky grew, a deep rumble that he felt rattle in his bones descending on the land. It issued a challenge with a call like thunder.

"Like thunder," Sasuke whispered to himself, barely holding back a laugh at the notion.

"Sasuke?"

He looked into the heavens; he gazed into the clouds, into the sparks he could see crackling in the firmament, making the cracks in the sky all the more obvious. It tried and tried and tried to do what Raikou had done that day, to make him feel awe and terror, to feel something after so much blood and darkness, to see light breaching the abyss, to see heaven itself revealed to him in glorious flashes of lightning and ringing bells of thunder.

"Sasuke."

But this was not Raikou.

"Sasuke!"

He raised his shaking, trembling, burning arm that sent pain coursing like fire through his veins, through his nerves, through every last part of him until he quaked with the strain it took to anchor such power to the world, until he shuddered with the anticipation of what was about to unfold.

And then he looked at his sensei, at the wideness of his eye, at the awe and fear that so clearly affected him, a man who had seen so much more than he of the material, mortal world. He saw the way he restrained himself from shaking, the way he held his vast terror deep inside him, containing it within a vault of logic and analysis. He saw the first blossoms of understanding that there was more to this world than what could be seen or heard.

"Get back, sensei."

Sasuke looked to the sky, and smiled grimly.

_Come._

* * *

Naruto could not sleep, would not sleep as he felt something change half a world away.

In a bed in the village in the trees, with the celebrations faded like the embers, like the gathered ashes of the deceased, in the dark that was around him but not yet enshrouding everything across the continent in starlit, moonlit black, he was restless. He was more restless than he had ever been in those endless nights after lightning had first appeared and caused such dissonance in the sky above, a static hum that forced him awake and aware almost perpetually. His scar, the dark red marks that swirled up his left arm, would not stop twitching, the skin and the muscle and the flesh of his form betraying him in favour of attentiveness to what was about to happen.

_Shard._

* * *

The heavens crackled and blackened with the threat of things to come. It was if ashen fire raged above the clouds, weakening the firmament with every lick of pure flame, with every snaking tendril of the snow-white inferno until what was held within the vault of the sky broke free and fell.

Whatever would tear itself loose from the veil would not compare to the force he had encountered on that fateful day, when everything had changed with a clap of thunder and a bolt of liquid light. It had been like an ocean then, a sea. It was savage, brewing, freezing, frigid, cold, shadowed by the incandescence so brilliant it made the world go dark, ashamed to show its imitation of light shine before the very spark of life.

Sasuke, arm burning, agony filling him, felt the bulwark guarding earth begin to fracture.

* * *

The word rang silently inside him, a noiseless sound that echoed in a chamber buried deep, a vault sealed beneath a mountain within. It sounded like the clicking of a lock, the unravelling of bonds, the clanking of loosening chains, the metallic clunk of irons hitting a prison's floor.

Somewhere, here – around him, his place in the world – and there – around the one linked to him, _his_ place in the world – but also _there _– the place they could not locate, the place they could not understand the dimensions of, the place that defied their keen sense of their physical place in the world, the place stacked high with boundless knowledge, an understanding of everything they had yet to know – a gate was opening.

_No._ It was two, Naruto realised.

_Two gates. One within. One above._

* * *

The sky above began to open, the white sparks, the fledgling flames the shade of snow, surging stronger and stronger as the milliseconds began to pile high, his vastly expanded perception making the world crawl but still unable to make the sky wheeling overhead flow any slower.

It was a strange, twisting and turning mirror of that night, where the ground was white instead of red, where the sun had yet to fall completely from its perch, where the only steel was held by him and his sensei, where the one above was not the one now in his heart. It was weaker, it was lesser, it was inferior; it was nothing but a pale imitation of what he knew. For all the terror it could stir, for all the awe it inflicted upon those who bore witness, it was a shade of the first light, the first spark that inspired life to _live_.

It was _broken_.

And the broken gate opened with a roar _like_ _thunder_.

* * *

Naruto sat up at the sound that none around him would hear, no matter how sharp their senses were, simply because it was beyond them. It was not a dismissal of their capacities, a neglectful thought of all their powers, but a mere statement of fact. The Sarutobi belonged to what this age called earth and fire, to the body and the heart. Theirs was the forest and the soil, the pyre and the ashes.

They were not tied to the sky.

And they would not feel the force that came crashing down on him, like that storm had on that night, when loss had taken place, when blood was spilled, when lightning had come. They would not feel any of that terror, any of that fear, any of that awe. They would not feel the relief of a desert dream, of sun above sands, of forgotten cities below the dunes, of a place where wind flowed freely.

But even though it resonated through him, a spine-rattling, skull-shaking quake that rocked him bodily, as if his whole world tilted and the earth fell from beneath his feet, it was not the power that had struck that day, not the storm he had felt marching with purpose across the world, tearing the sky asunder with every passing day, all to reach Sasuke.

It was only a fraction of that.

_A fracture of that_, he felt the thought roll through him, followed by that new word echoing inside.

_Shard._

* * *

A bolt of lightning, brilliant and blinding, a fusion of myriad colours, of white and blue and gold and bronze, struck with fury. But it was not Raikou's fury.

Sasuke met it with his hand held high, his chakra coiled, his electric heart beating, his arm aflame without fire, his veins coursing with burning blood, his scar scorching the very air. The shock, the pressure, the force was _immense_.

It hit like the avalanche, but focused, concentrated, and pressing down on _him_ with a stream of impossible energy racing from hand to sky, writhing and thrashing with rage and anger, wrath and fury that screamed oblivion upon the earth with a voice that made the world quake.

His sight was filled with violent light, but he felt it all around him as lightning spilled from his hand trembling beneath the power of the heavens, like water from a cup. Forks branched from the flowing tree, bursting into being across the landscape, massive archways and bridges of light constructed one instant and torn away in the very same, turning snow and ice to steam as lightning burnt roads and highways across the wastes, razing white forests to ruin and frozen fields to ash in the name of _fractured, broken _progress.

All around him, as the ground beneath his feet cracked and scorched, as his knees bent and buckled below such force, lightning fell from his palm and destroyed everything it touched as he held back the deluge of lightning-flame.

But this was no ocean, no sea. This was a pale, ashen inferno, an imitation railing against the cold. And he could fight a mere fire.

Sasuke, his hand blazing with captured light, his arm aflame with the effort it took to hold, his veins pumping sparking blood through his voltaic core, his chakra crackling like a storm, and Raikou roaring in his ear a symphony that woke the thunder in his chest and the lightning in his heart, _pushed._

With a shout that rang through the wasteland darkened by radiance not of the mortal world, he forced chakra through his body like a flood, like a river and a stream all his own that whispered untold strength into his bones, that caused his muscles to ripple out like the touch of a droplet in the stillest of ponds, that made him rise from the shattered, burning ground and made the arcing, tearing beams scarring the earth draw closer and closer until lightning flowed over him like a waterfall from his hand.

His chakra reached his eyes, and he watched for a moment, because the moment was his. He watched the way lightning falling from his palm flickered and wavered, twitching side to side like a beast's wild tail. He watched the way the trails and arcs scattered into sparks, glowing and intangible crystalline lights that glowed like streaking stars as they fell to earth. He watched the way the bridges and archways of light reformed about him for an instant, a canopy of sparkling structure, a ceiling painted with the twinkling glows of countless starlit nights.

He watched the attempt of the broken, fractured existence in the sky to recall what was lost.

And then, with that burgeoning understanding, he knew he had won.

Gathering his chakra for one almighty surge, with lightning flowing with a freedom greater than that of any mere stream, spreading with a liberty envied by any mere flame, Sasuke _pushed_.

With a _crack_ that split the frozen air of winter, that split the furnace of steam rising from the ground, that split the flaming trees, that split the clouds in two from horizon to horizon, that revealed the setting sun in all its radiant glory, lightning was pushed back into the sky on a thundering tide.

* * *

Naruto released the breath he hadn't realised was caught in his throat, held hostage by the constricting vice of his neck until he heard the last resounding _crack_ that echoed across the world. The air rolled into the darkness held in his little room, a space of woven walls and floor, a wide, yawning window that let in the night.

Relief flooded him as the tension, gathered and coiled within his lungs like a snake, slithered away, the serpent's strike warded off by a familiar hand and a powerful force. But the gate remained open.

The _shard_ had not left them.

* * *

"Sasuke... what was that?"

He heard his sensei's distant voice as he lay with his back in black dirt, scorched and hardened into something like dry clay with all the heat that had rushed down like malevolent sunlight. His eyes on the dripping orange space above cleared of cloud, his mind began to search for words, something he had forgone for some moments when he had connected with the thing in the sky.

"Well," he said, his voice dry and cracked like the ground beneath the snow, like his skin exposed to the rapidly cooling air, like the clothing that was crumbling away with every breath, every little motion that issued from him. "It's... not simple."

Kakashi leaned over him, his eye tired, his dirty silver hair dishevelled and fallen upon his brow. "It seems like nothing with you ever is."

He was nodding and considering a smile when he automatically stumbled to his feet, his body drained but still responsive enough to recognise the sudden shift in the air, the dramatic change in pressure as something gathered in the clearing slowly filling once more with snow as the clouds slowly regrouped.

He could feel it: a rhythmic, tangible _pulse_ that rippled through the air, an energy he could perceive upon his steaming skin. Then something started to glow, an ember of a colour he couldn't describe that began to grow, drawing power in the form of spattering, sharp-edged lines of electricity dancing from nowhere.

In a blinding flash without thunder, something formed from nothingness, and Sasuke's eyes widened and widened until they began to hurt.

He did not need to wonder on the nature of the beast before him, because it was not a beast. A beast would have a network of crackling, shining lights and lines buried deep in muscled flesh and thick fur. He would have seen it for what it was: an animal, gifted with a spark like all else living and breathing.

But when he looked at this... _being_ in front of him, he did not see a network or a system or some series of connections he was able to make sense of in no time at all because the knowledge pounded against his chest with every electric beat of his very heart. He just saw... _a shard_.

He didn't know how else to explain what he looked at when he looked beneath the facade of this creature that was not a creature. There was no network, no system to gaze upon. There was nothing there but pure _lightning_. Its entire being was composed of it, filled with it, shining with it, blazing with it like a sun only he could see.

It was nothing but lightning in a bottle.

Then, suddenly, he could make sense of this being that resembled a great white wolf towering above him in a land of rising mountains and falling snow, because it was a wolf in resemblance only. The storm of its clouded breath, the blizzard of its moving fur, the waves of its heaving chest, and the thunder of its restrained snarls were nothing but a fabrication, an imitation only discernible from the genuine article by one who could see the glowing spark of a living creature. And this being had no such single spark, for it was _only_ lightning. It was lightning cloaked in the robes of something living, something with a tangible, concrete existence of flesh and blood.

In that moment of understanding, the Study, the Hall, the Library, the Archive, the Nexus or whatever the hell it was really called opened as he stood so very awake.

_Shards of lightning, falling from heaven to earth, took in what they saw. They saw flesh. They saw blood. They saw life. Shards of lightning, handed down from heaven for the sake of flesh, blood and life, saw what had risen in their place, and they longed to be the same. So, split from the whole, the shards of lightning that fell from heaven to earth became something else. They became –_

"_Raijuu_," Sasuke breathed.

Then, without realising what he was doing, he reached out a hand.

"Sasuke!"

The wolf's intense gaze turned away from him, and something like a growl crawled from its mockery of a throat.

"Sensei," he said, voice barely above a whisper. "Just trust me."

The great wolf's snout moved gingerly, gently drifting towards his outstretched hand as the snow drifted down around them both. Glowing eyes, one of yellow-gold and another of blue-white, narrowed without ferocity or suspicion, without feelings he could attribute words to. All he felt the moment before he touched his hand to the beast of lightning was brilliance, the fractured beauty of a shard, the shelled facade of life to hold in the scorching glory contained within.

His finger tapped the vaguely wet nose of the white wolf, and he felt a jolt run up through his arm... his _scar_...

_Spark._

A flash of white swallowed sight, and he felt lines of electricity burst into the air, tracing deadly arcs and jagged streaks as a fractured existence separate from the whole strained for release from shape and form, strained for freedom in the only way it knew how: with roaring lightning.

But this was not a storm he had the strength to fight.

The blast of blinding light faded from his view, but an electrical inferno raged in the snow, trails of sparking and hissing lightning leaping from flake to flake as the beast lost all form. Ice turned to rain in the lightning thicker than flames he couldn't help but shield his eyes from, summoning up steam and mist in droves, swarming haze both hot and cold coiling at this meeting place of worldly discord. Grey clouds churned black in the sky that rumbled with thunder not his own, but he dared not look away from the white-blue firestorm lined with streams of yellow-gold embers that grew and grew until he could no longer see the mountains.

It swallowed sight, it swallowed sound, and it swallowed everything before it plunged him backwards into a moment of oblivion he could vividly recall. All was white, and then all was returned in a split second that slammed him back into reality, hands he couldn't feel clawing at melting snow and ice he could only see between his fingers.

_Fingers... claw marks... gone..._

He saw the paw prints, the massive gashes in the watery, wafery snow that the great wolf had left, but there was no wolf to be found. There was only the snow and ice turned to water, the steam rising from scorched, boiled ground, and the smell of burnt, still burning ozone and crackling lightning drifting on hot air slowly returning to bitter cold once more, all as the sky again turned grey.

But there was one other thing he noticed when he looked down at the first hand that regained feeling – his right hand.

When he looked at his own electrical network, it glowed far brighter than that of any other living creature he had seen. His right arm's flow was stronger than his left's by some way, shining with a greater light and sparking with a greater energy. But his right hand wasn't so bright he could barely look at it with his electrical sense engaged. His right hand didn't roar with an inner lightning so fierce and brilliant he wondered if Kakashi could hear it. His right hand didn't hold the same radiance as the Raijuu had.

And yet, now it did.

On the back of his hand, beneath the skin and written in the bone, was some sort of crystalline structure, burdened with the same glorious electric presence as the Raijuu. But atop his skin, in the centre of the few remaining scraps of his glove, burnt or branded into the back of his hand like the brutal testament to some archaic ritual, were black, jagged lines shaped like a diamond, but elongated to an almost bladed point.

And he swore he could see it pulse with a white-blue light for a split second.

* * *

The sun was harsh. Naruto knew this, but he knew this on a mental level, one that observed the sun distantly as a glowing orb that blazed with something like fire, casting fierce light from afar. The barrier the sky provided lessened the fury with which light descended, making it tolerable for the little things that crawled the land, swam the seas, and flew the air.

It was another thing to feel it so very _physically_.

Naruto wiped sweat from his brow as they ran the craggy path carved into the cliff, an old thing weathered by wind and forgotten by most cartographers who bothered to catalogue the more stationary geographic features of this barren landscape. The air was heavy, a weight that bore down hot and dry over the sunbaked rock, a barrier to entry for those who crossed unprepared.

He had underwent plenty of preparation for the world at large, but it was still a pain to run full bore up a steep hill in the middle of the day with not a cloud in sight with all this heat on his shoulders and his sensei's stupid sense of humour for company.

"Keep up, Naruto." Asuma tossed the words with a glance over his shoulder, setting the pace ten or so metres ahead as they ascended. "We're almost there!"

"You told me the same thing two days ago," Naruto fired back, pushing his little legs as hard as they could go.

"Well, it's even truer now, isn't it?" Asuma chuckled.

"Your logic is shitty and so are you, sensei," Naruto grunted.

Asuma feigned a gasp, hand to his mouth, smile creeping behind his palm. "You wound your dear old teacher, little one. What would Enma-sama think?"

"He'd agree with me!"

Asuma kept on laughing.

They'd been travelling for a week solid, setting a fearsome pace across the Land of Fire, putting his hard-earned endurance and stamina to the test as they bounded through trees, forded rivers, and waded through swamps with wind pouring out behind him, his confusing chakra making at least speed something understandable. But that did make him think...

"Sensei."

"Yeah?"

"Why were the people in Kawa so uneducated?"

"That's rude, Naruto."

Naruto chuckled a little. "I'm being serious."

Asuma scratched his chin thoughtfully, still easily blazing his way up the path ahead. "Alright, then make a guess. You figure it out before we get to the top, I'll get you something good to eat when we can."

He knew it was a different nation, and that from the state of the dwellings they saw in the swamps, their general lack of electricity, plumbing, or other basic infrastructure he was familiar with, that it was poorer than the Land of Fire. But that didn't explain why they stayed like that. Kawa no Kuni wasn't the oldest of nations, but it had least been around since before the formation of the shinobi villages, in the period of the warring states. It was established enough that it traded often. They'd seen caravans and merchants stop in Nagare, the biggest town in the south with decent roads, hawking foreign goods and exotic baubles to everyone in sight on their way to the west. He could only imagine that it was even more prevalent in Wan, the famed capital built upon a dam that reputedly put the Hokage Monument to shame.

Prosperity brought opportunity. That made sense, didn't it? If there was money, there were chances to make more money. And if Kawa no Kuni wanted to make even more money, wouldn't it make sense to start by building up the people?

They were poor, living in squalor in the swamps, languishing in mud, digging channels and building up riverbanks as they waited for the rains to come and wash soil rich in nutrients from the north in a flood of life that eroded their homes but put food in their hands. Then, when they finally had enough to eat, taxes were taken. Then they had to rebuild with what little was left, and wait for it to start all over again.

The little time they had spent there – finding something to eat in a ramshackle stall, buying an intact shirt from a store that made new things from old things, filling canteens from a crumbling well, getting shouted at by a superstitious old man about offending the river gods as they hopped across the wooden dam lain across the river's neck, all in under an hour – told him that the people knew little of the outside world. The stares from wide-eyed children, just a few years younger than he, and wary adults at their appearance and their sparse armament had told him that, too.

Poor, uneducated, adhering to a system of living that guaranteed them little coin and huge contribution to the ruling few – why?

"Oh," Naruto uttered, just as they reached the top. "They want them that way."

Asuma's expression was... odd, a mix of pride and pain he couldn't quite understand as he looked back at him, stride slowing as they mounted the summit. "Looks like you get ramen next time we find it."

"A noodle lining to every raincloud," Naruto nodded.

But, as he came to walk upon the cliff, the burnt rock warm beneath his worn sandals, there were no clouds here. There was just blue sky that stretched on almost forever above a sea of... _sand_.

Naruto stood still, and _looked_. He stood still, and _felt_.

His vision drew away from the brown-red rock beneath his feet, and to the desert before him. So high up, standing upon the cliffs that towered above this land's eastern maze of canyons and rock-strewn badlands, it was as if the world he knew simply fell away, rock crumbling into sand, into dunes that cradled a world he had intruded upon, a dry desert garden that made sense only to him.

The rock crumbled still, but it crumbled into rolling plains of faded gold, lacking verdant green but changing like an ocean tide, lacking reflected blue but holding fledgling life. The rock crumbled into a slow yet shifting expanse of soft sand, a river of gentle dust and long-broken stone beholden not to the flow of water, but _wind_.

Kaze whispered in his ear, and he realised that his dreams, images brought to mind by a storm that shook the very earth, did not compare.

This was the origin of that song – _high, then low, high, then low_. It still went up and down, still like a breeze over hills, or still like a flowing river of air over dunes of golden sand, still like gentle zephyrs in a land of wind and warmth where the sun still shined brightly, always.

The ancient song flowed from times long past, once sung in halls and temples long sunk beneath the shifting sands of time and the shifting sands of a desolate tract of earth. And those windswept cities of desert clay and brick, marked with mystic symbols and arcane icons, still lay beneath the soft sands that lay beneath a harsh sky resting upon a harsher land.

Naruto felt an urge to smile, as wide and as happily as he could, but then he didn't.

_A howl._

But it was not the moonlit cry of a lone wolf among plains of snow, he realised. It was the mournful howl of desert wind among the burning sands, long left to swirl and eddy like bone-dry water in this ever arid, ever lonely place.

This was not the wind of the forest, not the air so alive with pungent scents of damp and decay yet rich with the smells of life in growing abundance. The forest wind was old, old as the trees; the desert wind was older, ancient. Its scents were subtle, distant as they wafted and weaved tales of sun-stained sands and heat-scorched air, dry and brittle as they cracked upon his skin. It was as if the air creaked as the wind trickled forth, suddenly old, elderly, and decrepit beneath the beating waves of the brutal sun.

Naruto blinked once, taking in the sea of sand, the sea of sky and the sphere of flame between them. There was little life left in the old bones of the Land of Wind.

And then his ears almost twitched as something new – several of them – flitted into range of his hearing with speed, too fast, too big, and too quiet to be anything other than ninja.

His hand drifted to the holster on his right leg, and his eyes meet Asuma's in a warning, but the easy grin his sensei flashed him dispelled any sense of approaching danger. And then he heard a heartbeat he hadn't felt echo in his ears for some time, but still familiar enough for him to recall.

"Jiji," Naruto smiled, and the old man appeared beside him, his robes of white and red fluttering to a standstill, a weathered hand on the brim of his hat, a kind smile peeking from the deep shade the sun cast on his face. He vaguely took note of the other four heartbeats that collided with his ear drums at a distance, positioned around the Hokage in a diamond pattern, the old man at its centre.

"It is good to see you, Naruto-kun," the Hokage said, and the tone told him how genuinely the old man felt that as a hand squeezed his shoulder. The dark eyes set beneath a firm brow slid away after a moment of holding his own, along with the fingers resting on his shoulder. "It is good to see you, too, Asuma."

Naruto didn't need to look to know that his sensei suddenly tensed, his body snapping to attention, his face in hard lines, rigidly composed as he inclined from the waist in a short bow. "Enma-sama sends his regards, Hokage-sama."

But their relationship and its strange complications, something Asuma-sensei never liked speaking of, were put aside when the Hokage nodded and reaffixed his gaze on Naruto.

"I've been told you've come a very long way in your training, Naruto-kun," the old man said.

Naruto smiled halfway, cocking his to the side as he chuckled somewhat. "I guess you could say that, Jiji. It didn't really feel like training so much as it did surviving. That forest is no joke."

"Ah," the Hokage grinned, tilting his head back, nostalgia taking to his voice. "I remember my days in the homeland. They were endless, certainly, not to mention quite painful. That was, however, the price paid for growth. Nothing comes for free, least of all strength. But that's enough of the past for now."

He turned to face the distant sands, his hands clasping at the small of his back. The motion let Naruto hear the slightest clinking of metal plates laid upon one another beneath his robes, much like armour. _How odd_, Naruto thought.

"I'd say it's almost time to tell you what brings us so very far from home today," the old man said.

Naruto quieted his thoughts for a moment. "Almost, Jiji?"

"Yes," he nodded. "The others should be here momentarily."

_Spark._

A strange flicker of happiness surged through him, and he felt two more shapes approaching, one taller and with a cautious beat in stride and heart, and one with a power and a presence that could not be imitated, that would brook the existence of no pretenders, no false claimants to that throne.

"Sasuke," Naruto breathed as he turned on his heel, eyes wide, waiting for him to come into sight, the basic human need to confirm what he already knew coming into play with a vengeance. The wait was an agony he simply didn't understand, all those seconds spent knowing yet not that made his senses stutter and waver, like static crawling over his vision, an electric hum ringing in his ears. He needed to see, needed to know, needed to –

"Naruto."

And there he was. He was little changed in shape or size, only a few centimetres taller, only a tad heavier in muscle and width. His dark, raven hair was a little longer around his eyes, down his neck. His blue shirt and his tan shorts were a size or two or bigger than before. His weapons holster was still on his hip, his pouch still clinging to his waist.

But then there was his right arm, with the red scar that resembled vines and veins spread across his skin, the one that matched his left, with its swirling pattern of thick and thin lines that bothered him only when something that _mattered_ was happening.

Like... _like the mark on his right hand_.

He could hear the old man talking, the tall man who had come with Sasuke sighing, and his sensei chuckling, but their conversation faded into the background. It became a dull, muffled noise that fell silent before the almighty sound of a quiet breeze roaring in his ear, and the distant crackling, biting aura of lightning making its presence known upon the world.

There was only wind, and there was only lightning.

His vision flickered down to the black burn on Sasuke's hand, and the... strange shape of it, like an odd kind of knife, or a rough sort of crystal. At the very least, the charred lines in his skin resembled a crystal _shard_.

And then that word echoed in his mind, loud and true like bells at noon, as it carried something more than the sum of its crystalline parts: lightning.

Static, even in this air robbed of water, rubbed uncomfortably at his skin, made little hairs on the back of his neck stand tall and straight. He felt the static sensation wash over him, and then images began tearing through his mind.

_Snow, mountains, avalanche; running, leaping, burning; clouds, lightning, wolves; heavens, crystals, shards._

It didn't make sense at first, too disjointed, too unorganised. But then something he had experienced only once, a power that wasn't even his, something from a life he had never lived, began to churn like gears. He didn't understand it in full, but he picked up the gist of it from the basic translation he pulled from garbled, half-seen images sent to him by that electric burst across the space between them.

_Creation. Shard. Raijuu._

The beginning, the fall, the result.

Three things, all from the earliest and eldest of days; yet the last had appeared, come undone, and slumbered now at Sasuke's side, waiting.

It made sense now, the madness in the dark the night before he had left. When the world was young, when reality was different, sacrifices had been made to keep it from falling apart. The elements had shed something like crystal tears, and shards of those five infinities had been scattered like seeds to hold it together. Some sank into the world, holding it up, holding things in place. Others remained apart and took form, left to roam the world.

When he and Sasuke had awoken, the gates had begun to open, and those same pieces from the first days of creation had begun to fall like rain into the world.

The elements were waking up, and so, too, were their Shards.

In the way that had been performed in his most recent, most impactful dream or memory or whatever those things in his head were, he summoned up the concept he wanted in the forefront of his mind, tied it to an iota of the drifting energy that flowed through him, and he _pushed_ without pushing.

A thought crossed the gap once more.

_Thanks._

Sasuke cocked his head to one side for a moment before he nodded. A gentle jolt of static in the air let him know it was received.

Whatever that dream had been of, all that death, all that blood, had given him something, a way to talk without words. He wasn't exactly adept with it, not yet. But it was new, promising, a new world he had yet to touch on. Sasuke had been able to share an entire experience with him, sent him tumbling through a recent memory in an instant, enough for him to understand what it was like and understand what it meant. Some of those old, childish feelings of discovery and wonder, like when he had first met Kiba, resurfaced for a moment.

"It's good to see you, Sasuke," he said, so very glad he meant those words.

Sasuke's calm, collected demeanour broke a little, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Same here, Naruto."

"Training was tough?"

"Very. I'm glad it's over."

"I guess we both have more control now."

"Yeah. Probably won't blow up in our faces so badly anymore."

Naruto grimaced. "The last one wasn't good."

"Kind of why they sent us to get trained in the first place," Sasuke returned it.

Naruto nodded. "You have a new mark."

Sasuke stilled just a little, his eyes moving to the others for just a moment. "A visitor left a parting gift."

"You tell your sensei what you knew?" Naruto asked.

"Yeah," he shrugged. "But it wasn't much."

It was a lie. They both knew it.

"I never much liked sharing about myself, anyway," Naruto said. "It's hard for people to understand each other sometimes."

"Yeah," Sasuke agreed. "I find it easier to keep quiet."

It made things simpler. The less they knew, the less risk was placed on them. What they didn't know couldn't hurt them. And yet this was something that could.

Naruto looked out onto the desert, out onto something there, something that he could feel growing. It wasn't the same as the deep-set terror of Raikou's arrival, nor was it the horror of a mistake from the two of them that drowned the day in the towering darkness of storms. It was something that begged a question.

If a Shard of lightning had woken, how far behind was a Shard of wind?

A hot breeze swept overhead, and he had his answer.

_Soon._

But it did not feel like those first two catastrophic moments in time. With the call, with the howl, it felt like... a challenge.

It felt like a _trial_.

It was then that conversation between the Hokage and his two jounin broke, a matter of their progress broached and their abilities told, their capacity for doing and learning at an end.

"Now, boys," the old man began, "how much do you know about Sunagakure no Sato?"

It wasn't an unusual question, considering their location.

"They're the smallest of the five biggest hidden villages; they specialise in wind ninjutsu, poisons and puppetry; they tend to produce quality over quantity in regards to ninja; they have a strong defence against large enemy forces because of their position and isolation," Sasuke quickly rattled off.

Naruto knew he knew those things, somewhere in the tangled web of information that was his mind. He supposed Sasuke just happened to know them more readily.

"Textbook answer," the tall one, Kakashi, said, "but we're not looking for a textbook answer."

Naruto paused. "Then what are you looking for?"

Asuma-sensei grinned. "There is a better question, actually: what are _you_ looking for?"

"You want us to gather information?" Sasuke asked with an eyebrow raised.

"In a manner of speaking," the Hokage said, but then his attentions turned elsewhere. "We will discuss the details en route. There is still some distance left to cover."

The Hokage looked to the horizon, a sly smile creeping along the old man's face. "I may be getting on in years, but I can still set quite the pace. I certainly hope the two of you can keep up."

The gathered ninja suddenly readied, and then the Hokage was gone in a blur of wavering robes and shadowy motion.

With the others gone, with Sasuke's presence blazing as he steamed through the sand, Naruto stood in solace for an instant.

His brow fell along with his eyes. The faceted breeze he felt curve along his surface and brush at the specks of sand in the few strands of hair caught in that same gust made him... sad, sorrowful at the age-old exhaustion he could feel riding and weighing heavy with tumult and time on the currents of the air. But, in the same moment, it gave birth to something with a flicker of familiar warmth and heat; determination flared into being. He wished to change what he saw, what he felt in his first gaze of this land. The breeze was lacking, holding nothing beyond the old stories and the creaking whispers of times far behind the current age. It had left the present, ancient wind trailing in its past wake.

The Land of Wind was empty.

With a rising confidence welling like seared, simmering, burning water in his chest, Naruto took his first step into the desert, the life-giving gale of Kaze at his back as he plummeted from the cliff. He felt a rush of cool air, the air of rivers, of fire, of forest, and of leaves, draw across his shoulders and past his neck, reaching into the cloudless sky above as he rushed ever down.

And just like that, without a need for whispers in his ear or a ceremony of a cataclysmic wind, he felt the promise written in the peerless clarity of the sandy heavens.

As long as he drew breath, breath itself would flow to this desolate land, and the breeze would flourish anew. As long as he walked the sands, zephyrs would stir up the dust beneath his tread, and the sky would see change awaited for millennia in the dunes far below. As long as he gazed upon the sea of sand, the sea of sky and the flaming sphere between them, wind would return to the desert once more.

His feet plunging into warm sands as he landed in the dunes, the heavy current of wind that cushioned him making the desert ripple like waves, Naruto offered the slightest of smiles to the endless blue above.

The trials could come as they pleased. The Shards could assail him as they wished. None of those things mattered, because Kaze had come home.

* * *

Far to the north, in the mountain range that separated the Land of Wind from the rest of the world, a boy walked through a hall of stone.

The dark-haired boy – still too young to be considered a man – wore robes the colour of clay and sand, loose-fitting apparel that barely swept the ground as he walked down the hall, the steps of his sandal-clad feet echoing gently off the walls.

The lantern he carried swayed in his hand. The light that spilled forth swung as he walked. The glow of flame licked at the walls, illuminating a carving that lined the corridor's western wall, beginning chronologically at the southern end, and carrying ever onwards towards the north. But it had yet to reach the end of such a vast distance.

The temple was built on the mountainside, but it carried far into the yawning spaces scratched into the stone as need had dictated over the centuries. The hall went from one side of the mountain and emerged at the other.

But what the carving depicted was curious, even still to the boy who had walked the hall so many times before. Before the foothills of the mountain, there was a town. The town was not old, nor were its inhabitants, but the site on which it stood was. He saw each of its states from furthest past to most recent present as he passed through the hall.

Light beckoned them forth.

The beginning of the carving was the first incarnation, an image of simple dwellings of dried clay bricks becoming larger and more prosperous, the shapes of people around them growing more numerous, and the presence of onlookers becoming more apparent. The second incarnation was a city surrounded by high walls, grand entrances barred by gates, caravans trundling along dusty roads, myriads of people finding lives within, and the onlookers increasing in number. The third incarnation was flame. Armies camped by a great conflagration, one that reached high into the night as the city was razed to its foundations, its people slaughtered or enslaved, jealousy at its peak. The fourth was ruin. The city lay abandoned for ages, drawing only scavengers, wild animals in search of shelter, and men given to crime and violence looking to ply their trade from a place forgotten to the world. A group of scholars scoured the hollows for relics of the past, for unknown ways of thinking and arts lost long ago, thus making the fifth incarnation discovery. The sixth was reestablishment of trade and people; the seventh was abandonment in thanks to famine; the eighth was a base of operations for the forces of local lords, using the foothills for cover as they unfurled their machines of war to defend the bottlenecks of the nearby mountain passes; the ninth, tenth, and eleventh all followed a similar theme.

The twelfth, however, was blank. In his lifetime, depending on the way time unravelled in the world around them, a new carving would be made, carefully laid into the stone in a process that would take years.

There was a reason the carvings remained such curious depictions to the boy, and it was the sheer _implausibility_ of the artistry he saw.

Not all stone was a simple material to work, least of all the sort that composed the mountain. Marble was the preferred medium of many sculptors, but basalt was a rarity. Even then, basalt in the Land of Wind was unheard of. The temple mountain was all but a stranger to this land, a grey mass in a sea of weathered sand and clay, and it was formed entirely of a stone very similar in composition to some igneous rocks.

But to see this...

No matter how many times the carvings appeared before him on his path through the hall, he could be nothing but impressed, shocked and awed at the sight in the stone. He could be nothing but at a loss for words when he gazed upon wide vistas of history, carved as if written, portrayed with an incredible, impossible tenderness that left him gasping time and time and time again. It was all somehow communed through nothing but lines in rock.

It looked _real_.

It was artistry of superb detail, something that went beyond the boundaries of a simple obsession with realism, and driving hands and eyes deep into the black, warped realms of the zealot. Somewhere in the middle of it all, the carving began to approach a surreal plateau, a safe haven of sorts resting between the lofty dream of an idealised sky, and the grimfaced beauty of mountainous reality.

He had had time to gaze upon it in full, but each and every glance he stole towards it felt a trespass, a travesty, a tragedy. The consuming sense of _awe_ he felt as he walked the hall compelled him to something near guilt when he ignored his duty in favour of gawking at a functional, albeit beautiful piece of history.

Despite its spectacular, improbable depictions, it served a purpose. It was a hall of recollection; a place meant for its namesake, but an invention many, many times older than he. After the completion of each image, the section of wall was marked with an arcane seal at its base, designed to prevent contact of any sort. It was unclear how, but he was unable to lay a hand on the wall itself, pressing instead against an unseen barrier.

It was a strange thing, indeed, but he was accustomed to strange things, accustomed to acting without given cause. He acted on the will of his teacher, the old monk called by those not bound to decades of silent reflection the keeper of records, responsible for the upkeep of any and all written works contained in the temple. Many of his daily duties were to carry out such tasks, the cleaning and caretaking of the cavernous expanse of the annals under the mountain.

But then there was the responsibility he was never to speak of, the one that called him to the summit – a realm shrouded eternally in heavenly mist, yet when entered, possessed an impossibly clear view of the world below.

The boy exited the hall after some long minutes in the flame-lit dark, and felt the always sudden cold of the approaching wind. He passed through an antechamber of many tall columns, the stone roughly hewn on the side he faced, but worn smooth on the side that faced the outside world. An arched passageway opened the temple to the sky.

He put his feet on the wide platform carved into the mountainside, and the cold winds that swallowed the mountain near the peak began their assault. Bitter hands and teeth of air clawed at exposed skin, his face quickly going numb, his hands losing sensation.

There was never snow. The distant desert drained the sky of moisture. But the cold pervaded still, and it clung to him with all its blustering strength. The only thing that fought the chill was the lantern he clutched, the flames burning bright despite the sunlight still filtering through the gathering clouds in the west.

He wrapped his robes tighter around him, and held the handle of the lantern tighter. He looked to the stairs that wrapped the mountain. And then he began the long, arduous journey to the summit.

The walk was a hard one, a battle each and every step of the way. The winds grew stronger, threatening to tear him from the earth as he climbed higher and higher. The stairs were weathered smooth and slippery by the fearsome forces of nature, and would make him fall to his death if he made a single misstep. The cold gnawed at him as time began to tick forward, the numbness claiming his extremities and seeking ownership of his body in entirety.

It was a journey he had undertaken many times, and he would undertake it many more. It was a dangerous task, but it was required of him. It came with many difficulties, but it was necessary.

After minutes that seemed like hours, after climbing treacherous stairs of old stone into the sky that changed like the seasons from storm to clarity and back a dozen times, after he lost feeling in most of his body, the haven of the summit was finally in sight.

He reflected on the warning first.

The only warning he had ever been given by his teacher was to never look at the jade statue upon the summit. Young and naive, he had been so utterly grateful for the sanctuary he was granted at the peak. Without thinking, he had attempted to gaze upon it in his first journey.

Such a thing was not allowed.

The moment he had lifted his head and drawn his eyes toward the faded green of what sat upon the mountain, the sky had _roared_. The whispering silence of the summit turned to a hurricane burst from above, one which had split his jaw when he made contact with the flagstones. Had the winds been any harsher, any firmer in their disapproval, the contents of his skull would have been spilled on the first day of his duty.

He reflected on the words second.

_West for the breath of Wind. East for the spark of Lightning. South for the Water's embrace. North for the Fire's heart. And, at the first and the last, the centre for the Earth, the bones of reality that anchor all._

He was to utter these words, each line of the old story, as he sat before the statue. He was to utter them as he lit each candle that never melted before the statue in each cardinal direction, in a sequence of west, east, north, south, and centre. He had never been told their purpose, but he imagined it to be part of the critical ritual, the sacred rites he performed when he finally mounted the summit.

And so, from the challenges and the trials he faced in his journey, he was granted rest upon the mountaintop.

The shrieking winds fell away as he fell to his knees on the ancient stones, feeling returning to his hands and feet, the flickering lantern still blazing away as it clattered to his side. Vitality rushed into his tired form, and he felt restored right down to his very soul, as if there was nothing that could touch him in this sacred place.

He turned to face the way he came after some time relishing the newfound breath in his lungs, and gazed down upon the world that lay before him.

There was sand, stone, water, trees, mountains, clouds, men and women and children that lay in the lands around him. All things he knew were visible from atop the mountain. From here, he could see the world. From here, he could see everything, and he saw it with the wind at his back.

This was Mount Soyokaze, the peak of the gentle breeze.

And it was time for the ritual to begin.

Taking ten steps backwards, he knelt. Angling his eyes to the flagstones, he turned. Clutching the lantern, he moved the flames to the candles that were not there.

The breeze atop the mountain vanished. The whole world fell silent.

The candles were gone. The pattern beneath them, the circles inscribed in the rock, were gone. Chips of something green, glinting in the remaining sunlight like shards of deepest jade, lay at his feet.

His mind raced. If the ritual was stopped, if the rites were interrupted, if the candles were gone, if the patterns were gone, if the statue was broken...

He broke the law of the mountain that would break him as he looked up.

But there was no cyclone, no hurricane, and no cleaving wind rushing to dash him apart as his eyes took in the sight.

In the quick glance he recalled of the statue, he remembered the shape of a man, the shape of the robes of a monk, the shape of an ornate staff tipped with six rings laid across the lap, carved from jade. He remembered a moment of implausible perfection, the kind of craftsmanship that sung silently in the hall below.

And now, where the statue had been, there was a man.

His head was shaven, his skin was tanned, and his face and features were old and weathered. He wore robes of a style identical to his own, of a colour identical to his own. The ornate staff that lay across his lap, its six copper rings dangling silently and still, was made of a wood white as snow.

But his eyes...

The moment his own made contact, his body stiffened, tightened until he couldn't move, until he couldn't breathe, until the world around him dropped away piece by piece, shard by shard. It continued to fall away until all he could see was the set of eyes that peered into his essence, until all he could feel was the vision that pierced his soul.

The moment he saw the storm of grey and silver, clouds and steel glinting in the left, and the glittering, vivid emerald carrying with it the verdancy of endless fields of grass glowing in the right, was the same moment he knew there was no escape.

There was no struggle. There was no conflict. There was no fight.

There was nothing when he felt the air in his lungs leaving him, abandoning him, rejecting him as the air inside was pulled away by the air itself, as it decided him...

_Innocent._

The man looked away, and he could breathe as normally as he had before, without any sputtering gasps or choking for oxygen. The world resumed, and he could hear the breeze on the mountaintop once more.

"Who... who are you?" the boy asked.

The man with the strange eyes full of swirling, rippling colour turned back to him, and looked him over once more. There was no otherworldly moment that captured him, no gaze that turned the air he breathed against him. There was just an old man in monk's robes, cradling a monk's staff across his lap, smiling at him kindly all of a sudden.

And then he spoke.

"I am simply an old man that does not belong here, that perhaps has no place in this time."

He stood slowly, the metal butt of his staff finding purchase on the flagstones as he rose and leant, copper rings jingling.

"But, before I can say for certain, I must see more of this age."

He looked away, to the world beyond the peak and the horizon it held.

"And then, after I come to know it, perhaps I will judge it."

The boy watched on in silence as the man shook his head wistfully, and began to walk slowly towards the stairs, staff ringing with each thump of metal and wood upon stone.

"Come along, young one. I believe there is a hall of recollection beneath that awaits me."

The boy rose gingerly, dazed and confused, shaky in the legs.

The old man looked over his shoulder, and beckoned the younger closer with a hand. "I do not bite, young one. Come. There is much to be done."

He stood still a moment longer, trying to find the strength to open his mouth.

"What... what is your name?"

A strange look passed over the old man's ordinary features, and an unknowable light flickered in his otherworldly eyes that once more saw through him, saw everything with such undeniable clarity.

And then he smiled gently, sadly.

"Asura."


	13. 12

F̱͔͍̦͍̭̐̎̊̆̽̓ͣr͋̌͛͆̀̂̀ŏ͉ͬͪm̄̐̐̚͡ ̗͕͓͚ͮ̃̑͊t͔͙̗̬̱͙͈̅͋̾̅h̳̬̔̿̿̀e͔ͯ̒̈̔͋ͬ͡ ̺͇͔͚̓͌̍̋͂A̠̩̠͉̗̞͊̔̾ṟ͎̻̺̳̘̙͒̇ͨ͂c͒̓h̰̽͊̉͜i͓̟̱͒ͫ̏̓͜v̜͗é͇͚̠̯  
͐ͮ͏̙̙̣̥̫S̈͗̆͑̏̍̇͡ç̻͉̣͚̳͈̟͊̅̿̿r͚̤͞ó͖̪̪͚̚͠l̈́̏̾ͤ҉̠̖̼̠͚ḽ̬ͣ͂̕ ̱̤͓ͫ̀͛ͤͦ̈́1̹͓̄ͫ̏͢ͅ9̞̭͇̗̊9̰̹̦ͣ̋̑̉͊ͯ̀9̴͎̗͈̇͆ͩ;̼̝͉̌ͣͪ͂̀ ̮̤̲͇M̦̖̰̠͕̞̿̉̀́͛͝ȇ̗͔̦̺͙̥̲̓͂̈́͑̔m̶̫̫̜͛̿͐o͈͍͌ͅr͔͎͐ͩ͠y̢͖̻̬ͪ̋̄ ̈̓́̌̃̎Ū̃͑ͥ̒҉3̪̭͎̥͇̗͐̍͒ͭ̀ͅ1̬̣͍͖̦͋ͥͩ0̶̱  
̢͕̽̍̒ͦ̄C̋ͤ̚͡a̙̗͚͇͡t̷̰͛̇ͫ̍e̱̘͙͚͚̩̊̍ͤ͒̅̅ͧḡ̪͔̪̂̂̓͆o̘͕̱̯̮͓ͤ̌̀r̄͋̇͑y͍̓:̣͍͖̮͉͇̭̔́̎̉ ̸͖̰̼͕̺̰̯̄̓ͣ͗ͩ͐͗Eͧ̆̄̂͏̰̻̙̻Ř̟̖̺̤̝̦̖ͥ̾̍̍̍R̠̝̹̤̲̙̤̓ͧ̚O͔͉ͩ̊ͥ̑ͩ̕R̷̳̠ͧ̅͊͐̏

_she play games with us._

_i do not appreciate her lies. _

_i am within my rights to kill her and every last one of her people._

_i will wait. she may yet learn the error of her ways._

* * *

After a journey of five days, a group of five crested the final dune, guarded by four. The three men kept their breathing even, the four shadows barely drew breath at all, and the two boys panted lightly, hiding their fatigue well for ones their age. They had done their very best to keep the pace, the first obviously stimulating his entire body with Raiton, the second relying on a quieter, Fūton-based method of propulsion to drive him forward. Each was a viable solution to the same problem, and each was an example of forced ingenuity – an incredible, perhaps unbelievable example. Feasible workarounds, created by children, for systems of chakra usage that were generations old was nothing short of miraculous. Either he gazed upon the first great feats of fledgling prodigies, or… well, maybe he was getting a little too conspiratorial in his thinking.

After all, Sarutobi Hiruzen was an old man, but not all the time.

The weight of age was much like the tide, rolling in and out, tugged to and fro by the phases of the moon with each passing day. At times, it pooled cool and calm around his ankles; at others, it swelled to his neck and forced an ocean down his lungs.

At times, he carried the thoughts of youth, like when he whispered chakra into his breath upon the last dune, exhaled gently, and felt a certain kind of relief as cooler air washed over him, the deathly heat of the desert sun abated for a moment or two. It was an older man, experienced and practical, that then considered the arguably endless uses of nature transformation, including the little-explored field of mundane utilities. It was a man greying at the roots that resolved to find the time to compose a text detailing the various possible functions of each nature transformation in non-combat situations. It was an elderly gentleman lucky in his retention of colour in skin and hair that reflected over the ample learning opportunities to be had in a text of basic techniques for beginners, as well as the possibility for inspiration for those two or three individuals that, perhaps once a generation, produced a jutsu that would find an exalted place as a saviour in the ranks of Konoha's shinobi, and then proceed to long outlive its creator.

And then, when he gazed upon the great wall of Sunagakure no Sato that stood before them, he found himself a young man, instilled for a moment with all the brash defiance required of such a place in the cycle.

Yet again, perhaps age was more like the moon than the tide.

But, in the end, he was an old man, a learned man. Age brought – if not wisdom – experience. Experience dictated the need for a plan. He did not enjoy the act of planning; it was a necessity, a demand of his position. But he did enjoy the results it could deliver.

With a silent wave, he beckoned his company down to the sandy plain before the wall.

Ultimately, there was something to be said for planning, for calculation. Many did not believe that a plan could be strictly adhered to. Room for variations and anomalies had to be made, adaptability always key. In many cases, they were correct. It was difficult to account for every factor, every cog and every wheel that would make such machinations turn in appropriate pentameter. But there were moments, few and far between, when everything came together, and like a timepiece crafted by a master, the movements that filled it were jewelled with the weight of perfect prediction.

Hiruzen stepped forward just shy of a metre more as he felt the focused chakra signatures of the approaching shinobi pluck at the strings of his tightly-wound senses.

The Shunshin – a technique of rapid movement he was intimately familiar with – required an array of physical reinforcements to be used with true effectiveness, not just of the muscles. The senses could not be neglected if one wished to avoid becoming chunky paste on a tree or a mashed corpse at the bottom of a ravine. But those were the dangers of his homeland, his nation. In these flat desert plains, a glance away from one's home, the necessities of sensory enhancement – most notably visual – were not as strict, the consequences not so harsh.

That was why the squad leader did not instantly see the old man standing directly in his path when he exited his Body Flicker, why he screeched to a halt in the sand only a scarce few centimetres away and found himself face to face with the unnerving, grandfatherly smile of the Hokage. Habits, deep in the safety of hearth and home, were not easily broken.

"Greetings. We are the delegation from Konohagakure no Sato."

When the brown-haired, green-eyed jounin reeled back – a motion that was little more than an abrupt tenseness along his thoracic curve and a two-centimetre shift of his left foot backwards in the sand – the Hokage knew he was already one step ahead.

The squad behind the man – composed entirely of chuunin, each with some combat experience given the speed of the reactions to their leader's incredibly minute adjustment in bearing – were on guard in a matter of seconds, their hands all at their sides, their hips, their chests, their collars, even their posteriors. Any place there could be a weapon, hidden or otherwise, there was a hand hovering nearby.

Of course, the cloak-clad shinobi surrounding him had been ready some moments prior to their arrival. If there was anything in which a group of hardened black-ops agents were proficient, anticipation of potential enemies and actions was it.

"I see," the jounin said after a moment, his voice congenial, perfectly levelled. "May I see your papers, Hokage-sama?"

"Of course," the Hokage intoned.

With a motion from his left hand, Asuma immediately stepped forward and offered the appropriate papers to the squad leader with a passably deferent incline of his head and rigidness of spine. The formalities carried down the list with the authentication of the paper's origin via application of chakra to determine gradient, the careful measurement of the Kazekage's signature and signet mark against prepared samples, the momentary analysis of the ink, and the activation of the included seal and recording of response time. The procedures took no more than a minute, a testament to the steady hand of the man before him, and a petty victory for him as it took five seconds longer than on his previous visit to Suna.

The plan was beginning to unfold, from triviality to tumult.

"Very well," the jounin nodded. "Everything appears in order."

He took a moment to incline his body with respect before he spoke once more. "My name is Eichiro, and I will be acting as your official guide for the duration of your stay, Hokage-sama. Now, if you would please follow me."

Ever so slightly, the Hokage smiled.

* * *

Naruto watched everything carefully, and listened even more so.

The man's green eyes – though green in the sense of winter, when the few leafy trees and the frozen grasses darkened a hue across species – were intense, stormy and severe a moment after the first few exchanges of painfully polite words with the old man. After a seemingly simple encounter with the Hokage, the one from Suna seemed… strangely awake.

Eichiro walked before them, tall and purposeful in his beige flak jacket and black uniform. But his heartbeat was… skewed, tense. He was unbalanced, an echo of dissonance rippling between the skin and the mind. The other guards – or sentries, or shinobi, or escorts, or some other appropriate collective moniker – held themselves similarly to their leader, a clear matter of habit, but less certain as to _why_. A mix of men and women, they seemed to miss something that Eichiro did not.

That slight move the Hokage had made had not been an accident, but he could only guess at the reason behind it. Yet he did not have to marvel at the reasoning of the Suna shinobi as they moved to stand around them – flank them, he corrected himself – in a loose pentagon. That was calculated, too, but it was just common sense when dealing with dangerous visitors in a ninja stronghold to keep eyes and bodies on them at all possible times.

They walked farther and farther across the burning sands before they came to a shadowy breach, a perfectly cut fissure in the towering wall of rock that guarded Suna from the world. Eichiro stepped forward, and the Hokage, Asuma-sensei and that Kakashi fellow followed. A moment later, Sasuke walked on, and Naruto did the same. The shadows slipped inside. The rest of the Suna shinobi stayed close at hand.

It was dark for a moment, and then his eyes adjusted to the sight of yellow-brown rock blanketed half in light and half in ink. The sun, tipped barely past midday, made the contrast powerful.

They walked in silence in the shadows of the great wall, and Naruto's head was filled with the echoes of his environment.

At first glance, the rock was unremarkable. By sight, there was nothing strange about it. But it didn't _sound_ right. It was an odd idea, but all works of earth, natural or manmade, resonated in response to vibrations, even ones as subtle as footfalls on sand-laden stone. When the waves brushed against the rock, they would react in various ways to the stone's gradient, its various stratums formed over millennia. The natural shifting of the world slanted the particles and the bonds on grand scales, resulting in vast but slow directional changes in the material itself.

Yet the rock around him sounded like it was almost perfectly level, one consistent stratum that ran the length and breadth of Suna. And that was impossible. According to the knowledge within, such a thing could not naturally occur.

But this knowledge – somehow – did not account for chakra.

Chakra, he knew only from personal experience, was many things, but for ninja it often meant manipulation. If his theory was correct, the entire barrier of Suna was manufactured – or at least given some vestige of form – by chakra, which meant it could be manipulated. They had a wall they could open and close at will at any point along its length.

Or, at least that was what he concluded when he heard the wall a hundred metres behind begin to rumble and grind the retreating slit of sunlight at their backs into sandy nothingness.

That had to be why their approach was so far off any of the established routes they'd only seen at hundred-metre glimpses, lined with caravans and grunting beasts of burden and chattering people, along with the occasional shinobi darting through or dipping their toes in the trade stream. He couldn't imagine it was standard practice for a Kage to enter another hidden village without vast precaution, especially when Suna could apparently guarantee a safe, entirely isolated route into the village proper at someone's will.

Maybe he was wrong. Maybe it was just a one-off deal, a particularly powerful manipulator of rock given the assignment of opening and closing a vast chasm through the wall for a group of important foreigners. Maybe it had something to do with fūinjutsu, or some esoteric form of ninjutsu, or some bastard child of both arts that created a nigh-impregnable, pseudo-natural barrier.

Maybe it was because, deep in the bowels of the knowledge drip-fed into his mind, there was nothing about chakra.

Questions flared into being in his head, but the silence pervaded. He shot a clear look at his teacher, but Asuma-sensei merely twitched a finger down. _Later._

But then the questions faded, replaced by something other than mystifying revelation. He no longer had the time to think about such things because a wave of rock-warped sound shocked him from thought and told him they were approaching hundreds and thousands of living, breathing beings.

He looked to Sasuke, and felt the touch of static brush the outer edges of his being as lightning reached unseen across the desert sky.

* * *

It was like waking up from a six-month sleep. The closest he'd come to the same sensation was when he –

_Shard._

The black mark on his right hand burnt gently, and he ceased those thoughts, returning instead to the nearly overwhelming pressure of bioelectric streams blazing beneath the fearsome sun as the entire group – Konoha and Suna alike – came to a stop at the roughly carved shape of an overlook upon the first ring of cliffs.

The leader of their escort – Eichiro, or something similar – turned to face them, eyes directly on the Hokage as he bowed slightly, righted himself fully, and swept an arm to the sun-stained vista behind him.

"Welcome to Sunagakure no Sato, honoured guests."

Sasuke knew, in the old part of his head, that Eichiro meant the village. The man meant the stark, desolate beauty of sheer cliffs and natural defences, the humbling enormity of an oasis valley carved from the desert, the delicate strength of a cradle of sandy browns and muted yellows accented in strange places by little pockets of vivid green. The shinobi who carried himself with a strange intensity brought on by the tense interaction between foreign parties referred to Suna, the village that thrived where no other could.

But Sasuke could only see Suna as it mattered to him, as it mattered to life, as it mattered to Raikou. He could only see the people. And he saw… _all of them_.

He was cautious, careful in the moment he called forth a sliver of lightning.

The world slowed to a halt, and the moment rested still against him.

It had been so long since he'd felt something like this. It had been so long since he'd gazed upon myriads of electrical signals, each unique yet undeniably cut from the same cloth. It had been so long since he'd seen the river of storms in all its glory of blue and white and bronze, since he'd seen it crackle and spark, sizzle and hiss and arc from being to being as they walked and talked and acted and _lived_.

He felt the electricity in the barren desert air, in the waves of heat that washed over him, in the sweat that swam away as wisps of steam from his skin, and in the people as they connected and disconnected from one another without ever realising it. He felt the life inspired by lightning so very long ago.

And then he was drawn back into the world of man by words.

"We are grateful for the hospitality of Sunagakure, Eichiro-san," the Hokage said pleasantly, his nod firm.

It was strange, the way everything and everyone stopped to allow two men, no matter how grand the rank of one, their stilted chatter. It was rigid and structured, even though the words themselves flowed smoothly. It was… ritualistic.

Clan life had been much the same, now that he recalled it. The memories were distant and misty, and then they were clear as crystal as lightning coursed through his mind. He remembered purely, without the taint of emotion and misery. He recalled the component parts, the formality of certain interactions, the ceremonial acts undertaken when an important visitor came calling. There were specific stages, rooms and clothes and behaviours dedicated to entertaining a guest before business was attended. Offers of hospitality were made, not out of kindness, but custom, tradition.

This was much the same, but so much larger than anything he remembered his father dealing with, like when someone arrived through the guest entrance while he hid behind the elegant embroidery of his mother's kimono and watched such things take place before a child's curious eyes.

He sent a semblance of a glance to suddenly iron-eyed Kakashi as the silence smouldered on for an uncomfortable moment, loaded with a similar, though perhaps more crucial, questioning. The only response was the casual motion of his teacher's hand, palm parallel to the ground for no more than a scattering of instants before it jerked a signal to him, continuing on in the form of a vague muscular stretch.

_Later._

A long stretch continued on beneath the sun, upon the sweat of his brow and an unclear need for water. He considered reaching for his canteen, but a firm look from Kakashi told him to stop. And then it told him to look.

He wondered what that meant, and then he remembered.

He examined the scene before him with his eyes, not with lightning. Eichiro stood at the cliff's edge, his back to the village and his dark forest view on the Hokage. The Hokage simply held his hands at the lowest curve of his spine and returned the gaze with an amiable smile. The shinobi of Suna around them waited, muscles taut through the desert tones of clothes. Kakashi remained stoic, and Naruto's teacher kept his hands at his waist, near his pouches. The four agents of the Hokage were perfectly still. Naruto watched on, impassive.

Even without the world slowed to a crawl by lightning's blaze, time seemed to drag its feet through the sand as the two men stared at each other for what he knew as only seconds but felt like minutes. His senses started to wake his blood, hissing and galvanic, and he was made aware of the first twitches of hands moving to weapons, fingers into signs. The nervous systems he saw, represented by a network of flickering electric ponds and creeks across arms and legs and bodies, flared brighter, faster, fiercer. He could almost taste the electric shift on the burning air as everything readied itself to descend into unimpeded anarchy.

"The Kazekage will greet you and your aides in the village centre, Hokage-sama. We will escort you there now."

And then the snake slithered away, and the overwhelming tension uncoiled like a broken spring. Everything suddenly seemed easier, unclouded as everyone visibly loosened. It was strange, and Sasuke was left with only more questions.

* * *

The situation was curious, but not unresolvable.

The jounin was clever, disrupting the base rhythm he'd established in the back and forth, the little gives and takes that formed the foundation of the tug-of-war he had set in motion, by simply waiting, letting his silent brand of killing intent do the work.

It was a subtlety beyond many shinobi, a subset of those commonplace expressions of raw power that was a little more sinister, a little less overt in nature, closer to the realms of genjutsu. It was like toxins mixing with the air itself, feeding false danger into the senses, cording muscles, dilating eyes, drip-feeding adrenaline into the bloodstream when there was no reason for such. And then as soon as the pressure was released, every trace vanished, not a scrap of proof left behind.

Under the perfect conditions for a storm, the man could spark conflict and blame it entirely on the enemy, without leaving a shred of real evidence in his wake. The obvious threat loomed large above the Hokage's head.

_Suna knows your game._

The Hokage's smile did not waver in the slightest. "Of course, Eichiro-san. Lead the way."

_And yet I know yours_, the Hokage mused as they began the walk down to the streets of Sunagakure no Sato.

After all, the Kazekage did not keep fools in his employ.

* * *

The mirror told her she was ready, that her hair was tied, that her face was washed and clear, that her clothes were clean and free of dust, but she had to be sure. A mirror did not lie, but no mirror told the same truth as another.

She checked that her battle dress was properly set upon her shoulders, her pouches fastened, her holsters in place. She made doubly sure her fan was secured firmly to her back. There could be no missteps, no mistakes.

_"Gaara will be occupied elsewhere, Temari," her father said from behind his desk, back to her, eyes upon only his village._

They could not afford them. But she put those thoughts away, buried them deep with the rest of the dark, precious pain. It would only distract her, and she needed all her focus. It was required of her.

She met her own eyes one last time, fought teal with teal in a domain of glass and steel, and relished the last moment of calm before the day's storm.

Temari went to meet the Kazekage.

The hallways passed her by as she descended the winding stairs and unconventional layout of the Kazekage's mansion in a haze of focus and etched memory. It would have confused an intruder, but her whole life had been spent in its long, curved passages, the living quarters on the second floor only accessible from a staircase on the third. The perplexing structure was almost comforting.

Almost.

It took her a few minutes at a walking pace to trail her way through the mansion, to ignore the rooms gilded with riches for the purpose of receiving honoured guests, and to pay attention to the barren, sand-toned halls lacking even one breath of detail. As always, it felt a strange, half-hearted compromise between lifestyles, the fine line treaded between opulence and discipline. The politician and the shinobi did not an easy pairing make.

Her feet carried her deeper than the ground floor, below the surface where stone abounded and the air grew cool and cloying, thick with dust and a lack of flow. The basement was scarcely a room, coarse rock walls and grains of sand underfoot illuminated by loose, dangling globes. Old boxes and crates, dusty things relinquished to memory, filled the space, leaving only an inkling of path before her. She weaved her way to the rear wall, traced her hand across the surface, and felt the indent.

She pushed, and a fraction of wall retreated on silent hinges. She walked into the dark.

The path beneath her became carved and harsh, the walls rough and barely cut, the moist ceiling shaved free of stalactites. The distant sound of flowing water trickled into her ears. What little light remained at her back ebbed away into dim electric glows, and the narrow passage carried her below structures, a street or two, and to the Kazekage's offices, the administrative heart of Suna.

The path climbed ever so slightly, and she reviewed what was to come.

_Her father – _the Kazekage_ – still did not face her. "Among those accompanying the Hokage will be two children, similar in age to you and your brother. Obviously, they must possess some degree of talent if they have been brought by the Hokage himself to see the tournament. Evaluate them, as you would any other. Report your findings daily."_

The assignment was not complex: spend time with two foreign children, assess them, and inform the Kazekage each day. She could do that in her sleep. Basic information gathering was not a difficult thing in the slightest. If she simply made the right opportunities, it would be child's play. But that was the confidence she had in her own abilities, not in the abilities of others. They were unknowns, and until she gauged them face-to-face, she would have to assume they would be problematic to read.

The fact they were being brought into Suna by a Kage could not be ignored. These were unlikely to be the spoiled brats of nobles, significant merchants or trade magnates. If anything, they would be like her, trained and awake to their surroundings, instructed to play the same games of intelligence and half-truths. She would need to be cautious, no matter how young they were.

The cave became a hallway, and the clammy cool became warm. The lower passages were all like that. The lowest levels of the Kazekage's tower, a great clay monolith shaped much like an urn, did not share a ventilation system with the upper levels. At least a dozen detached systems of ducts wormed their way through the walls and floors of the structure, isolated instances equipped with sets of thick metal shutters and filters designed to deny the passage of airborne toxins.

They had more than enough reason to warrant the paranoia.

She strode through the earth-tone corridors unhindered, the few chuunin and office staff she passed sparing her respectful nods. The daughter of a Kage was to be shown at least some modicum of deference. The passageways opened into busier and busier sections, more and more respectful nods as she walked by larger spaces, some lined with desks and paper, others with files and cabinets. The administrative wings that rested in the dense circular base of the Kazekage's urn were abuzz with workers, a constant yet efficient hum of streamlined bureaucracy. The sweeping changes to the system the Kazekage had implemented years back made it run all the more smoothly.

And then, exiting the western wing, she found herself in the atrium.

Unlike the utilitarian clay and plaster of everywhere else, the entry hall was meant to be seen. Dark, mottled marble dominated the floor. Six slender pillars of a lighter shade lengthened the high ceilings as they raced from the clear glass doors of the building to the polished reception desk at the rear. Four perfectly square spaces rested between each pillar, filled with soil and cradling plants, native and exotic. It was of unquestionable quality and craftsmanship, but ultimately restrained. The atrium was a strange contrast of luxury and modesty, the demonstrated grandeur of success and the quiet, undying strength of Suna.

She walked out from the west wing's doorway, cordoned out of sight by the black feature wall behind the desk, emblazoned proudly in white with the hourglass symbol of her village. For a brief moment, the atrium was blessedly empty of echoes and speech.

"Hello, Temari-chan."

She recognised the voice behind her, the hushed, lilting murmur that spoke her name more fondly than anyone else did. For the first time that day, she had a reason to smile.

"Hello, Itsumi-san," she said quietly, turning to face the woman behind the desk, a stack of papers awaiting processing before her. Eyes like liquid amber twinkled at her from beneath pinned gold-brown bangs, and Itsumi's smile held the same kind of soft joy.

"It's good to see you," Itsumi spoke after a moment, a little louder than the first familiar whisper, but not loud enough to carry across the marble, to those undoubtedly watching but not bothering to listen. "You seem well, if not a little tired."

She didn't have bags under her eyes; the mirror told her that much. But Itsumi knew her, had watched over her safety and health from birth, a familiar face in the shifting sea of masks and veils. She was older now, and no longer necessitated the same constant caretaker, Itsumi a resource better used elsewhere.

"Preparations require time and effort, Itsumi-san," she answered properly. "I give mine gladly."

Itsumi's smile faded just a little at the edges. "Indeed. That much, at least, is expected of all of us during such an important event."

"I imagine the paperwork is trying."

Amber eyes glistened at a chance for mirth. "Trying to drown me, perhaps. I swear, there are more sheets of paper in this building than there are grains of sand in the desert."

She chuckled quietly, and Itsumi's smile resumed, a complete form sliding to another pile. She was a disciplined kunoichi of Suna, even employed as a secretary.

The conversation would've gone on. It would've been pleasant, a wanted distraction. It would've been welcome to hear her old guard speak fondly of embarrassing moments, the kinds of ridiculously childish things she did only a few years ago, sticking out her tongue and refusing baths, wanting to play in the sand and the dirt with her brothers when she had responsibilities as the firstborn child. She would've relished the chance to hear of that welcome past again.

Itsumi opened her mouth to say something – something she knew was kind and sweet and reassuring, even without hearing it leave her lips – only to snap it shut and straighten her spine.

"Kazekage-sama."

She felt her stomach drop ever so slightly as she turned to face her father.

The Kazekage's face was stern, just as it had always been. It was not harsh or foreboding. It was simply how it was, his forever neutral, impassive bearing, unchanging from his dark combat garb to the robes of office. But, beneath the shadow of the Kazekage's hat, the permanent tightness around his eyes slackened subtly, and she felt his disapproval.

"Itsumi-san," he nodded ever so slightly, his auburn hair shifting with the gesture.

Itsumi returned it, inclining a little deeper with her motion.

His eyes examined the chuunin at the desk for a moment, and then they moved to her. "It is time, Temari."

She nodded, and did not spare a glance over her shoulder as she followed him, a step behind and to his right. She had already shown weakness enough by failing to hear his approach, by allowing herself distractions. She would not do so again.

The Kazekage's robes swept across the marble, a ripple of fabric she skirted at the edges.

"We will meet Baki and Kankurō at the workshops," he said, eyes forward as they came to the glass doors, split before him by the guards stationed at the front. "We will take a route through the markets. From there, we will proceed to meet with the delegation from Konoha."

His eyes fell to her, ever so briefly.

"I understand, Kazekage-sama," she said, with proper dignity, deference and authority. Her assignment went unspoken.

The doors closed behind them, and the heat of the day fell on her brow. She wondered what the children from Konoha would be like.

* * *

A sweat-drenched man raised a skewer of glistening meat like an army standard; a woman waved her magnificent fabrics like flags. The marketplace was the frontline, filled with explosive produce and rapid-fire sales tactics, a grinding war machine of hostile traders and ruthless peddlers on both sides. For the average civilian, it was like walking onto a battlefield.

Kankurō looked enthralled.

From everything she had been told and taught, and even though she had yet to truly encounter it herself, conflict was chaos. The key to survival, Temari had learned, was navigating that chaos.

Kankurō looked ready to run for the nearest stall.

"Easy, Kankurō," the bronze-toned jounin in the turban and veil said. "We will sample the delicacies of the land later."

"But, sensei!" Kankurō whined, his forehead scrunching into lines. "It all smells so good!"

She looked sharply at her brother, all spikes of mud-brown hair, plain yet fine grey robes, but the rebuke died in her throat. The older man allowed himself the privilege of a chuckle, and then he shaped a hand by his side into a half-ram seal and straightened his spine. His voice carried into the air, audible over the vast, rolling sounds of the marketplace. "I agree, Kankurō, the bounty brought by our village is truly grand! But we will have time to inspect it after our meeting with the esteemed delegation from Konoha. Come."

The lapse in stoicism drew the Kazekage's iron gaze, but the Fūton jutsu in use – designed for the amplification and extension of sound waves – excused it, she realised a moment later. Those firm eyes turned away in silence, back to the murmuring crowds that parted before the circle of shinobi that surrounded them.

She was glad Baki-sensei was there to keep her brother in line. The Kazekage's firstborn dragging the second kicking and screaming for food through Suna's markets by the scruff of his neck would not be appreciated. Kankurō was impulsive at the best of times, and Baki-sensei provided needed stability.

He had been overseeing Kankurō's progress at the workshop.

Temari buried an amused smile beneath steely resolve, the same kind of steadfast but appreciative visage worn by the Kazekage as he gazed upon his works, the ferocious clamour of the village in an all-out trade blitz, buying and selling and gambling everything under the sun. But the thought surfaced nonetheless. Her younger sibling was always busy playing with his toys.

She only called them that to annoy him, but she did respect the art of puppetry. It required precision and talent to control a puppet, but it demanded incredible cunning to manipulate one with even a hint of the same subtleties demonstrated by the true masters of the craft, like Chiyo, honoured commander of the Puppet Brigade, or even like the one of the deadliest puppeteers of all time, the traitor Sasori of the Red Sands. Not only was puppetry a difficult road by virtue of applications, but the time, effort and ingenuity needed to create a unique puppet was a discipline all its own.

She could at least admit her little brother's playtime in the workshops was not unproductive.

The same could be said of their time in the marketplace.

In the heat of the day, the core of Suna felt alive. The steady roar of the people, the shouted pitches of stalls laden with exotic threads and tapestries, the heady aromas of foods gathered from every corner, pot and pan of the Land of Wind – it all mixed and churned in the boiling cauldron that was the village at the height of the Chuunin Exams. It was an event for all, even those who barely knew on what date the tournament fell, let alone which villages were competing. It was an international affair, attended by paupers and princes alike, peoples from all walks drawn by the vast streams of goods and services that coursed along the trade routes to Suna like blood to the heart. As they walked through the pulsating throngs, alongside the heated masses, with an escort of the dutiful ninja of Suna, the streets swelled to bursting with every beat.

Temari observed as much, and then pushed it to the back of her mind. While important to the village, it was ultimately inconsequential to the task at hand.

They approached the grand statue of the First Shade.

* * *

The square was more of an oval, breached in four places by the four main thoroughfares of the village, skirted by businesses prosperous enough to maintain a permanent position in one of the more illustrious areas of Suna. Goods were not hawked; products were marketed. Deals were not done; transactions were made. There were no bets to be had, though investments in up-and-coming industries were certainly available.

The Hokage hummed, a noise of considered thought as they all stood in the square that held the monument, crowds streaming and milling at the edges with their own brand of mindless chatter. He ignored the more commercial, civilian aspects of the plaza ringed by structures of higher make, facades adorned in foreign woods and elaborate silk awnings, and instead focused on what was relevant.

"The statue has changed since I last saw it, though that was some time ago, of course."

"In entirety, yes," Eichiro said. "Kazekage-sama created it in memoriam for the last war's end."

"I see."

The key word was _created_ – as opposed to commissioned. The Kazekage had sculpted the statue himself, but not by hand. The man's weapon of choice was infamous, as was his ability to manipulate it.

"Gold," the Hokage noted. "How very fitting."

Where the others of that calibre found their might in martial prowess, unmatched mastery of the basic shinobi skills, or genetic lines filled to bursting with blood-borne power, the Kazekage had simply _learned_ gold, just as his predecessor had learned iron. They attained strength through knowledge, and an immaculately detailed statue of burnished gold, shaped without the touch of a human hand, was a testament to that power.

"It represents what is to come," Eichiro said simply, as if it was fact. At the very least, the Hokage believed that the man believed his own words. His loyalty was admirable.

In much the same way, so was the First Shade at the village centre.

It did not shine blinding, but quiet, a measured vitiation of light – not absolute distortion or deformity, but alteration to expectation, to common assumption. It did not reflect light so much as it drew it inwards, away from the eyes and towards the golden statue, a palm tree caught mid-sway at its centre.

The Shodai Kazekage sat calm and resplendent in his hard-won shade to the west; the Nidaime stood tall and seeking from the edges of the palm's southern domain; the Sandaime kneeled humble and low beneath the northern sun as black motes of sand hung suspended, waiting to stream between the seams of his upraised hands; the Yondaime raised trails of gold into the sky of the east, segmented spires and twisting structures frozen in time just above his head.

The Hokage knew the monument to Suna's founding was not its first, but its fourth. The first had been moulded from clay, just as the Shodai Kazekage had moulded Suna from the barren sands. The second had been made of solid copper, a depiction of the advancements in art and weaponry the Nidaime Kazekage delivered to the village. The third had been made of iron, a simple sign of veneration for the power of magnetism made infamous by the Sandaime Kazekage. The fourth was gold, an uncompromising reflection of the prosperity promised by the Yondaime Kazekage, a reminder of hope for all Suna.

Of course, the Hokage believed none of that. A statue of leaders past or present was a declaration of strength, present or future. The vast faces of the Hokage Monument were much the same, though perhaps a little more grandiose than a three-metre statue of four men arrayed in various states of contemplation in the shade of a palm, even if it was forged of gold. Regardless, the statue stood as a memento of things inextricably intertwined: history and power.

It all hearkened back to when the samurai and the warrior monks in the Land of Wind first declined; when the nomadic shinobi clans formed blocs and alliances to better distribute the flood of work pouring in from the flailing noble houses in the midst of coups and mad grabs for power; when the man who would become the first of the Kazekage smashed the warring unions apart, crushed a Bijū with his own power to prove his might, and settled the shifting sands beneath him once and for all.

It was a dramatic twist of language, but a sight more accurate than the old folktales of a great uniter who gathered the distant wanderers from all corners of the desert and the shore, who used all his amassed strength to defeat an ancient, immortal beast formed of the dunes themselves, and to finally claim a promised land for the nomads doomed to walk the sands forever and always.

Again, the Hokage believed none of that. But information was a power all its own, and history fell deep into that category, something that could be used to stir up the old doubts bred by a past plagued with economic shortcomings and the unresolved deaths of beloved leaders.

Strangely enough, he found poking that particular bear quite amusing. Especially when all it could do was flail in impotent rage to protect its own flagging reputation.

"Kazekage-sama!" The voice of Eichiro rang strong and clear. "I present to you the delegation of Konohagakure no Sato!"

Eichiro and his chuunin assembled in two opposing lines before the shadow of the First Shade, bowed at the waist, and waited as the Kazekage's retinue approached from the grand western boulevard.

* * *

"Hokage-dono."

The Kazekage swept forward from the protective circle of shinobi that dominated the square of the First Shade, a barrier that repelled the onlooking crowds filtering through to the marketplace behind by the tension in the air alone. He extended his gaze towards Eichiro – one of the more capable jounin she knew of – and the bowing chuunin, and they straightened as he passed.

Temari knew the procedures, the pseudo-ceremonial nature of a meeting between Kage on peaceful ground. This was the Kazekage's village, therefore he was the initiator. The first word – the first _strike_ – was his.

"Kazekage-dono."

The Hokage was old, small and weather-worn, yet the pressure she felt upon her shoulders as grey eyes wandered over her for an instant outmatched that of the midday sun. He was leathery, wrinkled and bearded, wearing a smile befitting a kindly old man as he stepped away from the statue, away from his entourage, among whom she recognised Hatake Kakashi – Kakashi of the Sharingan featured heavily in the bingo books of many villages – and Sarutobi Asuma, the Hokage's son, both clad in forest-green and navy-blue, standing near two children she would need to observe. The Hokage was old, and perhaps he was kindly in temperament, but he was also a Kage, one of the most dangerous people in the world.

The Kage stood opposite each other before the statue's western face, the resting yet watchful visage of the Shodai Kazekage upon them all.

"You honour us with your attendance, Hokage-dono," the Kazekage began, just loud enough for his voice to carry across the sudden silence that engulfed the square and the quiet businesses, punctuated only by the faint whisper of the breeze and the whistle of a kettle in a distant teahouse. "The duties of office rarely allow for such visits even in times of prosperity, but rarer still in times of loss. Though they have been expressed previously, allow me to offer my sincere condolences."

_The Uchiha clan_, Temari realised a moment later. It was old news, but it had been startling to hear of a clan so thoroughly established destroyed overnight by one of their own, especially the co-founding clan of a major shinobi village.

"I offer you thanks, for your kind sympathies, and for your hospitality," the Hokage said with similar volume, closing his eyes and inclining his head ever so slightly forward – a sign of respect, but not deference. The old man looked past the Kazekage for a moment, towards the chuunin and their leader. "Eichiro-san proved himself a most efficient and thoughtful escort. I commend him for his efforts."

She would've missed it if she had not been watching so intently, ignoring Kankurō's impatient fidgets and Baki-sensei's soundless disapprovals – the Kazekage's eyes narrowed imperceptibly, and Eichiro's fingers almost twitched.

Something in the air changed.

"I am pleased to hear such praise of my shinobi," the Kazekage said, "just as I am pleased to hear that their efforts have not been overlooked."

"Indeed," the Hokage smiled pleasantly. "It has been some time since I last visited Suna, and I am glad to see that her defences have not fallen into disrepair, nor that her protectors are any less devoted."

Again, she would've missed it if she'd blinked – Baki-sensei bristled. It was nearly unseeable. A tremor of corded tension ran through his hand on Kankurō's shoulder, and her brother winced at the pressure. But even she understood the Hokage's backhanded, saccharine compliment.

"Of course," the Kazekage said. "None in Suna would dare disrespect our blessings, great or small."

The Hokage nodded in agreement. "The resilience of those born in this land truly astounds."

"Fierce winds breed a fiercer people," the Kazekage remarked.

"Quite," the Hokage concurred. "Ah, but I am afraid I've been rather remiss. I have yet to introduce my guests."

"Yes," the Kazekage said after a moment. "I must admit to some curiosity as to the children accompanying you, Hokage-dono."

The Hokage smiled and turned, beckoning with an aged hand. "Boys, come. Meet the Kazekage."

She watched the two of them share a brief look, and then they moved. There was not one doubt in her mind that they were trained, not with how quiet and balanced their footsteps were, not with how they carried themselves so smooth and reassured even in the simplest of motions.

The Hokage placed a hand on each of their shoulders and placed the two before him.

"Kazekage-dono, this is Uchiha Sasuke."

The raven-haired boy – dressed in rather rudimental fashion, dark blue shirt with a clan marking and tan shorts taped at the knees – bowed respectfully, hands pressed together before him, and Temari struggled to contain her surprise.

"And this is Uzumaki Naruto."

She stared.

The blond boy was eight or nine, a little hard to tell with the odd whisker-like markings on each cheek. His clothing was simple, a few steps above unkempt, hardly anything to be brought to a meeting of the Kage. He kept his hands close to his belt, one resting above a pouch, the other by a brown-beige holster taped with white to his grey shorts. The faded green of his shirt was emblazoned with a small sigil of flame in the centre, and his dark blue sandals were coated with days of dust.

But his eyes…

She met them with her own for no more than the briefest of instants, and she realised she had never seen anything like them. They were deep and blue and steel and storms and piercing and cutting through her _f̶̨͎̤͕̪͕̳̍́̉͒͆̃̈́̄l̵͙͓̼͎͖͔̐̏̇̑̈̄̑́̽̒ͅe̸̡̳̳̫̦̬̼̹̮̎̾s̶͔̥̼̳̺͔͙̦͓̗͆̏̿̂͗͛̀͆̀̔͘h̴̢͈̔̒̊̆͒̉͑͊̋̈͘b̴̝̗̈̄̋̋͒̄̆̾̈́͘̕͜ͅo̷̫͓͑̐͌͐̑̈́͝n̴͚̻̭̻̲̞̑̾̊̃̓ȩ̵̧̧͇̘͉̜̠̲͖̿͛͛͊͝s̷̖̥̬̩͚̻̞̯̣̏͊́̐͒̆̕m̵̡̡͙͑͆i̵͖͎͖̝̗̰͇̞̯͇͒̓͜n̸̯̝̲̖͙̭̬͓̎̅̓̍̐͒̐͌̕d̷̛͇̝̺̳̞̀̀̐͂Ẅ̴̧̼̘̻̗͚̯̭̯̒̈́͛̓̀̕͝i̵̝͎̪̮̪̹͕̦͊̀̎̊́̑̈́͜n̵̦̺̖̼̮͇͂͒ḍ̴̢͂_ –

She tore herself away, and commanded every fibre of her being to resist the urge to twitch at the shock of… whatever that was. The feeling faded as quickly as it came, and she wondered what had happened in the first place. She knew who and where, she almost knew how, but she did not know _why_.

She forced the strange, mutilating sensation down, and placed her focus on the Kazekage's voice.

"A pleasure, boys," the Kazekage intoned.

"I apologise for their state of dress, Kazekage-dono. These two have just recently returned from very far afield, engaged in survival training in rather extreme environments. There was little time to source more suitable garments for such a grand event."

"There is no need for forgiveness, Hokage-dono. I respect their dedication. They must possess great potential to garner such fortunate interest at such a young age."

"Certainly," the Hokage smiled once more. "There is no doubt in my mind they will become fine shinobi. In fact, I would wager it will not be too long before they take part in the Chuunin Exams themselves."

One more moment passed between them that she didn't fully comprehend, and then the Kazekage spoke. "Hokage-dono, given the likeness in ages between your charges and my children, perhaps it would behove us to arrange a gathering in the coming days before the tournament. Such would be a rare opportunity to strengthen bonds between allies, to see how Suna and Konoha may better relate to one another in future."

_What?_

The Hokage furrowed his brow lightly. "That is an intriguing notion."

It was surprising, an arrangement so soon and so… _public?_ She didn't understand that. She thought she was going to be observing them while she made appearances with Kankurō and Baki-sensei across the village, crossing paths as the foreigners sampled the delights of Suna, not directly associating with them in front of everyone.

The Hokage looked down at the two still in front of him. "Boys, what do you think?"

Silence reigned, and Temari never felt more exposed. Two Kage were visibly meeting in the centremost point of the village, and two children had just been invited by one to _speak_, to directly engage in international relations. It went against everything she had been taught on the subject!

The two exchanged another brief look before glancing to the Kazekage.

The Uchiha spoke first, a clan-child without a hint of nervousness. "It would be an honour, Kazekage-sama, to meet with your children."

The… second one… the _W̵̰̙͚̞͉̼͚̤̹̙̜̄̋̀͜͜í̸̡̢̻͉͇̟̰̖̠͙̬̪̖̩̱͋̾̀̒̄̄̒̀͠͝͠n̵̨̜͔͍̺̗̼̤̒͆̈́͋̈̆̋͑͘͘͝ͅd̷̨͖͇̈̆̾͛̾̄̕͝͠B̸̨̳͚̞͈̦͓̱͍̙̃̽̈́̽͛̈́o̴͍̰̳̩͚̫̪̘̘̺̭̮͉̻͛̑̈͛̒͂̿͛̓̚͝ŗ̶̺̻̓̈́͒̄͋̓̈́̔́́̓̈́́n̸̼̹̝͕̓̐̂͂͑̚͠͝͝_ _̡̫̣̬_–

Her body nearly recoiled, nearly trembled, nearly broke, but she didn't. Baki-sensei kept her upright, looking straight at the boy, unblinking and unthinking.

He was a little unsure, a little anxious, but he uttered the words clear and concise, blinking up at her – _the Kazekage_.

"Your aim is noble, Kazekage-sama."

The Hokage grinned broadly and _chuckled_, patting each on the shoulder and sending them back to their jounin handlers. "It seems my charges have given consent."

"Excellent." The Kazekage sported the smallest of smiles. "Though I am afraid I must cut short this meeting to receive the Mizukage, I shall look forward to our subsequent engagements in the days to come. A pleasure, Hokage-dono."

The Hokage smiled – and she knew it was anything but friendly. "A pleasure, Kazekage-dono."

The Kazekage reached out to clasp the old man's hand.

* * *

He felt the dissonance raging inside her, the moment she almost faltered in her step, the moment she almost brought shame to her entire village. He felt… a _ripple_, and everything came to a halt.

But it was wrong.

The world stilled far too much. Motions slowed to a fraction of their true speed, stuttering along frame by painted frame. His eyes swam between each work of art.

He saw the Kazekage's cleverly calloused hand edging towards the Hokage's weathered palm, a moment captured before an outward indication of cooperation and goodwill beneath the burning desert sun. He saw Asuma-sensei's eyes fastened to his old man's back, outlined in harsh light. He saw Kakashi paying attention to nothing yet everything, the centrepiece dwarfed by the surroundings in his eyes. He saw Sasuke the instant before accelerating his perceptions, shifting between one view of reality and another, a cacophony of artistic styles and strokes blurring into unknowable chaos.

It was too much. The world was too malleable, too viscous, too easily manipulated. A single touch, and everything would unravel. The ripple undulated across so many more things than air.

_No_, he reconsidered. _An echo._

And it came from… _her_.

He recognised it. It felt like… _wind_. But that was impossible. There was only one. There was only him. And that was why it felt like clutching a shadow, like holding a whisper in his hands. Because it was like brushing against the ethereal threads of what _could have been_.

Naruto didn't understand.

* * *

"Eichiro will guide you and your charges to your accommodations, Hokage-dono. Farewell."

The Kazekage turned and began to walk, robes sweeping over sand, the protective circle moulding to fit the streets as they all began to move, as she barely recognised the mechanical strides she took with Baki's guiding hand on her shoulder.

It wasn't her fault. Something had happened, and she didn't – _c̴͚̳̈́̉̋o̴͙̘̱̲̔͑̀ú̴̲̓̚l̷͓͍̙̏d̶̛̼̯͍̆͆͆͜n̵̛̟̝͆̏'̸͓̪̞̲̈́͑t̸̢̬̙͉̓̒͠ _ – understand it, but the misstep was not her fault. Yet, somehow, she didn't think that would matter to her…

Temari did not think it would matter to the Kazekage.

* * *

Night fell, and Asuma couldn't resist.

There was a balcony, a starry sky, and a few moments of solitude – perfect conditions for a cigarette. But those perfect conditions were fickle and cruel, leaving as quickly as they came when Kakashi slid open the glass door behind him. Sharing quarters was a pain.

"You have a second, Asuma?"

He took a drag, held the searing warmth inside, and then let it whirl, dangling a hand over the rail, tiles and clay instead of metal. He couldn't be bothered with any elaborate display of skill with smoke, rings or any of that crap. He wasn't some all-knowing old man with a pipe and a high-backed leather chair. He could leave that kind of smoke-blowing to the Hokage.

"I guess you want more than a second," he said after a moment.

"Probably." He didn't see Kakashi's shrug but he damn near felt it. "It's about Naruto."

Asuma snorted. "Did you have yours sweep the room for bugs?"

"Found all of the electrical ones by just sitting still. Took him a few minutes to uncover the rest, and he only missed two."

It was all part of the game every big village played with their visiting contemporaries. Something would be off if they _didn't _find evidence of surveillance in their rooms.

Asuma held off on inhaling. "Naruto clapped a few times, waited about five minutes, and then took me on a tour. Pointed out every last one of them. Actually _pointed_. Like, he just sat there on the floor and pointed at each one, one after the other. Even the ones I put there myself."

"I didn't think you were much for the waiting game."

"No. Never was, but you have to learn when it's required of you. I'm sure you can guess how big a part surveillance plays in the job when it involves the daimyo."

"Definitely."

"You going to put it up, or should I?"

Kakashi chuckled. "No. You'd just do it wrong."

There was a difference between silencing seals used indoors and outdoors. Indoors seals worked by measuring the exact dimensions of a room, and then absorbing sound at any perceived weak points. Outdoors ones could only dampen sound in a certain radius. Both were different sorts of extremely complicated he had no patience for.

Kakashi could make both.

_Bound to happen when you get taught by the one of the best fūinjutsu practitioners of all time, _Asuma considered.

The slip of paper, loaded down with runic chicken-scratch, stuck fast to the balcony's inner wall, and the air took on a strange meandering quality around them. The smoke from his cigarette looked trippy as all hell when it moved in slow motion.

Kakashi spoke first.

"How is he?"

He didn't bother asking why Kakashi cared. His sensei died sealing away a Bijū. The child left in the man's place was the closest thing the Yondaime had to a legacy, other than Kakashi himself, the last remaining student. The concern was natural enough.

"The training hasn't stirred anything up, if that's what you're asking. No problems. No containment leaks."

"How is he?"

Asuma took a drag, one of the last few left. "Bright kid. Very smart, still a little wide-eyed, and real quiet if you're not asking him a question. He took to the forest well. When it wasn't trying to kill him, he was almost in love with it."

"So, what's the problem?"

"A lot of things," he said after a moment, after another sluggish puff of smoke. "Little things, mostly. Worries and concerns more than problems. But there's a few big ones. If my old man has his way, you'll see one of them in the next few days. But… it's more a feeling I get than anything else."

"Like there's something he's not telling you."

He ground the butt into ash and cinders. "Exactly."

Kakashi looked away, into the night air. "Did the Hokage tell you about what happened in Shimo no Kuni?"

Asuma blinked. "Yeah. That lightning beast, or whatever."

"Sasuke called it a… _raijū_," Kakashi said, voice descending into a whisper. "It was strange. Powerful. And he fought it off, sent a lightning bolt back into the sky, and absorbed the thing into a mark on his hand, the same arm as the scars."

Asuma shook his head. "This shit is getting ridiculous."

"Yeah."

"First, it's warped chakra; then it's a tornado that appears out of nowhere and kills a bunch of people and wrecks a dozen blocks, and now it's spirit animals falling from the sky as lightning. What next, the Tsuchikage shows up the village gates and surrenders himself to us, crying like a little bitch the whole time?"

"Something like that."

"Did he even try to explain?"

"He said he would, but he hasn't yet."

He grunted deep in his throat. "My guess it has to be some pretty earth-shattering stuff if even a living lightning strike doesn't get him to talk about it."

"And what about Naruto?"

He scratched the back of his neck. "Kid's smart. Too smart for his own good sometimes. Too observant. His hearing's going to get him in trouble one day."

"How so?"

"I think he can hear heartbeats."

Kakashi fell quiet for a time, long and languid inside their little bubble. "You still think you can lie to him?"

Asuma shrugged. "Not forever. The ability seems to grow with time. But he trusts me, and that trust will override his senses for a little bit, at least long enough to see us through this whole charade."

He felt like a piece of shit for it, and he didn't doubt that Kakashi felt the same way.

But it was just a few days, a few places to go, a few false leads to put into place, a couple of things to do to keep Suna as a whole off-balance and floundering until it all went down on tournament day. He needed to give the old man enough time to play the game and come out on top, no matter how much he hated it.

If – _when_ – he found out, Asuma hoped Naruto could forgive him for dragging him into this whole fucking mess.

* * *

They were shown Sunagakure no Sato. They were walked through the markets, the grand bazaars draped with fineries and bathed in exotic scents from the world over, sold to any and all willing to pay or trade or haggle or talk. Old traditions were on display, seeping into the sky and the sand, staining every bead of sweat with some aspect of new culture, as deep and pervading as incense smoke in the pores.

They were meant to be distracted for a while.

Naruto did not know the purpose, but he could not find it in himself to truly care. He was occupied, as ever, with questions.

The _echo_ made no sense.

The sun trailed down as the hours passed, and the stark azure sky was banded with the burnished gold-and-flame of desert dusk. The burning heat dwindled, and the cold stars swept in on a chill wind. They were shown their accommodations. He was tasked with sweeping a room of bugs by Asuma-sensei, and he did so with an absent mind.

And then he came to the roof, to ponder and ask of the sand-strewn breeze of this place upon earth. He came to ask of Kaze.

_Why the echo? Why her?_

His only answer was the echo of his own thoughts.

The roof was circular, rimmed by a low clay parapet, thick and burnt and warm as all the rest. He looked down at it, and then through it as he opened his ears to what was beneath. There were moving guards, patrols; secured ventilation systems, welded doors in certain places, false rooms, added dimensions to the building. There was his teacher, smoking amid a distorted bubble of sound, and Sasuke's standing alongside him, leaning against a clay railing. And then there was –

"Naruto."

There was the one he had difficulty hearing the heartbeat of, the one who he had difficulty understanding, and yet no difficulty at all because he was the closest thing he knew to himself in all creation and all existence.

Sasuke sat by him on the rooftop, and looked upon the sky just as he did.

He had a question.

"How do we know each other?"

Sasuke was silent in thought, in consideration. "We don't, but we do. That's wrong, but…"

"I know you," Naruto said, "but not anything about you."

"Yeah, that's it?"

"Why is it like that?"

They drifted into silence when they couldn't find an answer aloud, when Naruto felt a heartbeat too close, a foreigner in their own home drifting too near. Of course, it made sense that they were being watched at all times by someone. So, he resorted to the… _ability_ they shared, and Sasuke… thought first, not in concepts, but in words.

_We've met before, I think. Or the ones like us, the ones that came before, did. I know it, but not in my own head. It's from… the other place._

Naruto nodded. _It's like being in someone else's mind. Or a lot of people's, all at once._

_It's useful, but it's confusing._ Sasuke paused, searching for words instead of concepts. _There's so much information. The concepts and the facts, the things that are true for everyone, all come easy. But actual thoughts or feeling or memories are hard._

Naruto hummed. _Sometimes they're clear, like if I somehow need them or if I stumble on them at the right time. Other times they barely make sense at all. languages change, or the words just don't make sense, or they don't talk at all._

Sasuke looked up. _Sometimes it's just emotion that they… _"Share."

Naruto blinked. "How do we do this?"

"I… don't really know. We can do it but I don't understand it. It's just like breathing."

"Or twitching a finger."

"Or just even thinking."

"It's natural."

"Reflexive," Sasuke said.

They fell into another lapse of silence.

"What's yours called?" Naruto asked.

"Nexus. Yours?"

"Zenith."

Sasuke scratched his chin. "Do you know anything about the Shards?"

"Only what you shared. Do you know anything about the gates?"

"Only what you shared."

"Then the memories haven't opened up, have they?"

"Not all of them, no."

Naruto considered something else. "Are you going to tell Kakashi about the Shard?"

Sasuke stared into nothingness. "Yes, but…"

"You don't know how?"

"No."

Naruto sighed, and let his limbs go, sprawling wide and far on his back, looking up at the empty sky full of stars. It was pure and brilliant, a place of boundless clarity as far as the eye could see, a perfectly functional infinity, a facsimile of the truly endless.

"Will we ever tell them what we are?"

Sasuke considered it. "Maybe when they stop lying to us."

Naruto nodded. "Maybe."

* * *

_Well, it's been a long time, my friends, but I'm still alive, and this story isn't dead._

_For the current followers of this story, feel free to check the beginning of each chapter after the prologue for new tidbits of lore that help explain the world a little more._

_For any new readers, I welcome you._

_For all those in between, I hope you look forward to the next installment as much as I look forward to writing it. Tell me what I'm doing well, what I'm doing wrong, and every shade of either ideal._

_Until the bit where Temari and Naruto fight,_

_A238_


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